AR Capture of Occupational Knowledge via Time-Synchronized Data
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Solution Overview
Problem
Current methods for documenting occupational knowledge for frontline workers are costly, time-consuming, and often omit critical details due to the need for experts to leave their work environments, leading to outdated documentation and significant costs from recreating lost information.
Innovation Solution
An augmented reality device captures time-synchronized data, including video, audio, and spatial data, to create comprehensive documentation of procedures while workers perform tasks, using a knowledge processing engine to generate procedural workflow data and convert it into various knowledge transfer formats.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If traditional written documentation methods are used, then comprehensive procedural knowledge can be captured, but the process becomes extremely time-consuming and expensive
Solution Approach 1:
The system creates digital copies of the expert's workspace environment, procedures, and knowledge through automated capture tools. Instead of manually transcribing information, the system captures screenshots, records audio explanations, and stores spatial relationships as digital replicas that can be processed and converted into structured documentation automatically.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces the manual mechanical process of knowledge extraction with automated computational systems. AI agents automatically capture, transcribe, structure, and convert expert knowledge into documentation without requiring manual intervention for each step, substituting human cognitive labor with automated intelligence.
2Loss of information
If experts are removed from their tasks to create documentation, then comprehensive knowledge can be captured, but operational productivity decreases due to extended downtime
Solution Approach 1:
The system enables experts to document their own workflows autonomously while performing their regular tasks. The automated capture tools run in the background, recording the expert's actions and explanations without requiring them to stop work or formally engage in a separate documentation process. The expert simply continues their normal workflow while the system captures the knowledge organically.
Solution Approach 2:
The documentation process occurs continuously alongside the expert's operational tasks rather than interrupting them. The system captures knowledge in real-time as the expert performs procedures, maintaining both the continuity of work and the accumulation of documentation simultaneously, eliminating the need to pause operations for knowledge extraction.
3Ease of manufacture
If documentation is created in conference rooms or offices away from work environments, then a controlled setting is provided, but critical contextual details are omitted
Solution Approach 1:
The system adds spatial and contextual dimensions to documentation by capturing the physical workspace environment, object relationships, and spatial arrangements alongside procedural steps. Instead of creating flat, locationless documents in offices, the system embeds geographic and spatial context directly into the documentation, preserving the environmental dimension where the work actually occurs.
Solution Approach 2:
The automated capture system acts as an intermediary between the expert's physical workspace and the final documentation. It captures the expert's actions, explanations, and environmental context directly at the point of work, serving as a bridge that transfers knowledge from the operational environment to the documentation system without removing the expert from their context.
4Loss of information
If multiple outside consultants are hired to create documentation, then comprehensive expertise is brought to the process, but costs increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system replaces expensive human consultants with automated AI agents that perform knowledge capture, transcription, structuring, and conversion tasks. These computational agents provide consistent, scalable documentation services without the high costs associated with hiring multiple specialized consultants, while maintaining accuracy through automated quality control.
Solution Approach 2:
The system creates reusable templates and structured formats for documentation that can be applied across multiple procedures and experts. Once the documentation framework is established, it can be copied and adapted for different workflows without requiring new consultant intervention for each documentation project, reducing recurring costs.
Data Source
AI summary
An augmented reality, mixed reality or virtual reality device is used to create occupational knowledge documentation, such as instruction and/or repair documentation for industrial equipment or processes. The device can be configured to capture time-synchronized data during a session in which an expert person, wearing or holding the device, performs a task to be documented. The data can include, for example, video data captured by a camera, audio data captured by a microphone within audio proximity of the camera, motion data captured by an inertial measurement unit physically fixed relative to the camera, and spatial data relating to locations of at least one of the plurality of objects within the field of view of the camera, wherein the spatial data is generated by one or more spatial sensors. The captured data can be automatically processed and used to render instruction on an augmented reality, mixed reality or virtual reality device.