Research Summaries

Back VNotes For Maintenance

Fiscal Year 2020
Division Graduate School of Operational & Information Sciences
Department Computer Science
Investigator(s) Balogh, Imre L.
Sponsor Naval Sea Systems Command (Navy)
Summary Maintenance of ships within the Navy is a multi-billion-dollar industry that has a direct tie to readiness of our fleet. There are different levels of maintenance, from actions performed on the ship by sailors at sea to when the ship gets overhauled in port by civilians. While not all problems are addressable by sailors at sea, there is a premium on being able to fix small problems before they turn into larger ones that take more time and money to repair. Current processes for descriptions involve computer forms where inspectors will describe the location of the maintenance discrepancy, it is then up to another person to read the description and find the physical location of the maintenance that needs to be performed. This leaves open the possibility of people being unable to "find" the location of the maintenance based on the description. The use of augmented reality to bridge this divide seems encouraging. There is a large push within the Navy towards utilizing Digital Twins for our ships, however practical applications that utilize or work with that potential source of data are scarce. This research, VNotes for Maintenance, looks at how, from the sailor's point of view, locations within the ship can be 3D "tagged" with information to mark items needing repair and provide other guidance specific to the needed repair. These tags are then available to other individuals to locate, track, and resolve the maintenance task. These "tags" could even be a permanent part of the Digital Twin of the ship allowing a detailed log to be maintained of all maintenance activities. This application will give the Navy one of its first practical uses of digital twins.
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Publications Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal
Data Publications, theses (not shown) and data repositories will be added to the portal record when information is available in FAIRS and brought back to the portal