Monitoring system employing smart gloves to analyze operator fabrication activities
AssigneeThe ESAB Group, Inc.
InventorChristopher Hsu
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Abstract
A method and apparatus includes a monitor in communication with, e.g., a work glove with built-in sensors to track an operator's physical activities including intermittently using hand tools, hand motion, and position or location in a work area. The sensors provide time-series data representative of the activities, and the monitor classifies and sequences the activities based on the time-series data along with, optionally, machine tool operational data. The classified and sequenced activities may then compared to instructed work procedures, ensuring correct work materials are used in production, and ensuring an operator's safety by detecting unsafe or abnormal work conditions.
Claims20
A manually operated machine tool operations activity monitor system, comprising:
- personal protective equipment (PPE) configured to be worn by an operator;
- sensors, incorporated into the PPE and configured to capture time-series data representative of activity performed with the PPE;
- and
- a processor to receive and analyze the time-series data, and classify the activity performed with the PPE based on the time-series data,
- wherein the processor is configured to execute distance or interval-based machine learning algorithms on the time-series data using at least one of a convolutional neural networks (CNN), or a recurrent neural networks (RNN).
A manually operated machine tool operations activity monitor system, comprising:
- personal protective equipment (PPE) configured to be worn by an operator;
- sensors, incorporated into the PPE and configured to capture time-series data representative of activity performed with the PPE;
- and
- a processor to receive and analyze the time-series data, and classify the activity performed with the PPE based on the time-series data,
- wherein the PPE comprises a wireless transmission device configured to communicate with the processor to track a location of the operator within a work cell by proximity of the PPE to designated radio tags/readers installed in different zones inside the work cell.
A method, comprising:
- receiving time-series data from a sensor incorporated into personal protective equipment (PPE) worn by an operator, the time-series data being representative of activity performed with the PPE;
- analyzing the time-series data;
- classifying the activity performed with the PPE based on the time-series data;
- receiving data representative of operating conditions of at least one machine tool;
- and
- performing the classifying also based on the operating conditions.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.