Constantly expanding application scenarios of 5G integrating industrial Internet have significantly
boosted the digital transformation of China’s manufacturing sector in recent years, improving
product quality and production efficiency of manufacturing enterprises and injecting new impetus
into the development of the industry.
Combining 5G with industrial Internet is considered an important approach to the digital
transformation of manufacturing, a focus of technological innovation and efficiency improvement
in China.
To improve the efficiency of troubleshooting for production lines, Chinese home appliance
giant Haier Group developed a remote collaboration solution integrating 5G and augmented reality
(AR) technology.
Based on 5G network and the group’s real-time remote collaboration platform, the solution
realizes fast remote diagnosis and handling of equipment failure and assistance with and guidance
on work in factories through virtual assembly technology.
Zhao Lianhui, head of a production line of a central air conditioner interconnected factory of Haier
Group in Qingdao, east China’s Shandong province, finds the solution both convenient and
efficient.
“In the past, if we encountered equipment failure when assembling electronic devices, we had to
ask experts to come to the site to fix problems. The communication was inefficient, that caused
high labor costs,” Zhao said.
“Besides, we had to switch off relevant equipment and wait for technicians, which could delay the
progress of our work,” Zhao added.
Thanks to the new remote collaboration solution, Zhao can now speak to technical experts in real
time via a pair of 5G-based AR glasses and seek advice from them whenever a machine failure
occurs. Experts can figure out the cause of the malfunction based on videos of the machine
uploaded by the AR device and guide through voice communication system of the solution.
“AR-powered production scenarios require relatively high network bandwidth and low latency,
and 5G network can exactly satisfy these requirements,” said Yang Weixin, chief inspector of
production at the factory.
“Electronic devices have been updated and replaced so fast in recent years. As their components
become more sophisticated, they are harder to assemble. Before the 5G-based AR glasses were
introduced, we had to spend a lot of time watching instructional videos or reading instruction
manuals before actually starting to work, and yet we could still make mistakes easily,” Zhao said.
Now with the 5G-based AR glasses, workers can start working soon after basic training, since
instructions on how to assemble products can be accessed via the glasses, according to Zhao, who
explained that the glasses can present instructions as 3D virtual images, and workers can touch the
virtual user interface to check specific installation procedures.
“The solution that integrates 5G network and AR technology has not only shortened assembly
time, but also reduced error rate and improved product quality,” Yang told People’s Daily.
By leveraging 5G technology, the interconnected factory has put into use relevant devices
empowered by smart technologies such as AR and artificial intelligence (AI) in eight types of
machine vision application scenarios, improving assembly efficiency by 30 percent and product
quality by 7 percent, according to Yang.
The workers adjusting and testing equipment at
