Inside EnduRAI’s Industrial Pilots
The basic premise behind EnduRAI is that fatigue and risk will be measurable, so they can be mitigated before they manifest as defects, not solved after they are done. Now that’s being tested where it counts: on the real production line, during the real shift and with real pressure!
The pilots operate at two industrial locations with completely different products but the same problem, which is about wear and tear and a slip-up in the “physical” work of the skilled worker, that could be discovered much later than it has taken place.
For over 50 years GOSAN, in Spain, has been manufacturing mechanical parts and assemblies for lifts and transport machinery for which it exports more than 35,000 custom parts annually to 70 countries. Partially automated welding processes, but setting and adjusting parameters still by hand, and a tired hand can mean that the weld is set out of position or the weld angle is incorrect, that no one notices until the inspection.
CEMRE Shipyard is a Turkish shipyard that makes fishermen, offshore and passenger ships. The most challenging work is to weld steel blocks together to form the hull, which can be difficult in confined, poorly-ventilated areas and uncomfortable positions. It’s semi-manual, team dependent work and errors are generally only detected by ultrasonic or radiographic testing – which comes after the fatigue induced tremors or unstable torch movement have caused the damage.
How EnduRAI fills that gap
Instead of imposing a new layer of ‘after-the-fact’ inspection, EnduRAI’s idea is to sense fatigue and risk while they’re building and then provide feedback to the worker in a manner that helps them make a decision, rather than make a judgment.
A wristband at GOSAN reads the operator’s fatigue, tremor and strain directly via surface electromyography (sEMG), while infrared and visual cameras monitor part geometry in real time. If the signals are all in the same direction, such as a wobbling hand with too much bead on the other end, or an uneven torch position, etc., the system lets you know immediately. The worker senses a slight vibration in the wristband, before the weld itself fails inspection, not after: a cue to adjust before the weld is finished. The goals are specific: 10 percent fewer defects, 15 percent less rework and 10 percent more productivity.
CEMRE scales to a crew as well. Multiple wristbands work simultaneously in the welding bay, along with oxygen, carbon monoxide and temperature sensors, and rugged IP65/67 cameras that track weld quality and torch stability, even in smoke and low light conditions. In this case, it is not just a supervisor who observes fatigue; it is the system that is detecting it and can halt the task, hand it over to a different welder or recalibrate the machine before a quality problem turns into a safety one.
Both pilots are actually testing this.
Under various pieces of equipment and conditions, GOSAN and CEMRE are experimenting on the same hypothesis: can a system predict fatigue and potential failure at an early stage and proactively change the outcome, namely reduce defects, improve weld quality and support humans in the job without becoming an eyesore?