Develop a virtual workplace supporting training, AIT, verification and product assurance tasks to reduce human errors and related time for anomaly detection.

 

Currently space missions are assembled, tested and verified following manual procedures: for the most part their production, assembly, integration and verification activities are lagging behind the latest ?Industry 4.0? smart factory approaches. Assembly, integration and verification from equipment up to platform and satellite level is a huge set of tasks and the nature of the involved engineering disciplines are very diverse. Activities are performed in parallel at several locations executed by different teams of experts and using a variety of tools. A common approach leading to an interconnection and the visualization of activities and their results across disciplines, sites and teams, would be a significant benefit in various application scenarios such as for instance the executions of ground system compatibility verifications and E2E tests.

A tool that uses the current status of technology to share and visualize activities and related results is instrumental to facilitate multi-disciplinary activities during the assembly, integration and verification of space elements and related equipment. It would optimize the execution of AIT/AIV tasks throughout the complete supply chain by enabling the on the spot exchange of expertise, the remotely supervision of activities and the contribution to multidisciplinary tasks across sites.

It is needed to develop a tool and associated interfaces for representative system-wide use cases allowing the implementation of the digital engineering paradigm during AIT/AIV and product assurance activities and enabling a cooperation of various disciplines based on a shared, visual representation of information.

The activity encompasses the following tasks:

- Analyze verification processes and workflows and capture stakeholder needs to identify capabilities and associated requirements.

- Identify and evaluate potentials for optimization among the different task executions and needs.

- Assess the state-of-the-art technologies suitable for supporting AIT and verification tasks across sites and domains and identify opportunities to optimize the execution of tasks.

- Identify a pilot case where a Virtual Workplace can be applied on the shop floor implementing the combination of engineering analysis results with AR/VR/Mixed Reality

- Identify a second pilot case where a Virtual Workplace can be applied across different locations/sites using AR/VR/Mixed Reality

- Develop and implement a tool and demonstrate the pilot cases

- Evaluate benefits and identify areas for further developments / follow-ups

;Software shall be delivered under an ESA Software Community Licence, so that any individuals or entities within ESA Member States can access to it and can provide update to the community of users.