Oracle IoT Cloud Applications for Supply Chain with Augmented Reality Demo

This Demo was put together to show off the IoT Supply Chain Applications and to show how Augmented Reality can help contextualize IoT data. It was built for Oracle OpenWorld 2017 then was shown at many other events after.

It consisted of a road with mini truck that can drive around it and a miniature factory that can load Starburst candy into miniature pallets and onto the truck. There was then a drivers touch screen where the truck could be driven from including an autonomous mode where the truck would drive itself around to the loading gantry and park, then kick off the loading of a pallet. You could then monitor this whole process with the real IoT applications on the TVs above and in Augmented Reality on an iPad Pro.

Demo Video

Augmented Reality

One of the big features of this demo was showing what can be done with AR technology and IoT data. This demo was shown about one month after Apple released the first version of ARKit. There are two AR use cases we showed:

  1. Adding 3D markers aligned with a real world machine. You can then click on those markers to see the Digital Twin data for that Sub-Asset.
  2. Projecting a complete virtual representation of a Factory onto the table top. This would allow you to see and contextualize the data on a remote factories production on your meeting room table.

IoT Fleet Monitoring Application

The map of the track was loaded into the fleet monitoring application and we translated the positions of the Truck into real world latitude and longitude and reported it to the application as if it was a real truck driving around.

IoT Production Monitoring Application

The production of the factory along with the simulated machines in the virtual AR factory was fed into IoT Production Monitoring application just like a real factory would.

Factory

The factory was designed to dispense Starburst candy into a miniature crate on a pallet then load that onto the truck.

Conveyer Belts & Mini Pallets

One of the interesting challenges was 3D printing 2 custom chain style conveyer belts. They were designed around a box of thin steel nails that are used as the pivot pins. I initially 3D printed a set of holes of different sizes to find one that was a good smooth rotating and one that was a friction fit. Then one side of each segment uses the friction fit and the other the rotating fit. The conveyer is then assembled with a pair of large pliers to push each pin in. The end result was great and ran for days with no issues. There are two conveyer belts, one that carries raw Starburst and one that carries mini-pallets with crates that hold 1 or 2 Starburst. The mini-pallets have magnets in the bottom that locate them on to exact positions on the conveyer belt and aid in helping them stay in position when the belt moves.

Trucks

The track and trucks was based on the cool toy system built by the now defunct Anki startup in San Francisco. They made these amazing cars and trucks that drove around a track using computer vision to read infra-red barcodes hidden from human eyes in the track. I took their trucks and repainted them and 3D printed new trailers for them.