Publications / 2020 Proceedings of the 37th ISARC, Kitakyushu, Japan

Developing a Windshield Display for Mobile Cranes

Taufik Akbar Sitompul, Simon Roysson and José Rosa
Pages 1444-1451 (2020 Proceedings of the 37th ISARC, Kitakyushu, Japan, ISBN 978-952-94-3634-7, ISSN 2413-5844)
Abstract:

Modern heavy machinery, including mobile cranes, are increasingly equipped with information systems in the form of head-down displays that present supportive information. Due to the physical presence of head-down displays, they are usually placed far away from operators' line of sight, thus the information is unintentionally overlooked. This paper investigated the use of transparent displays in mobile cranes, which enables supportive information to be presented near operators' line of sight without fully obstructing their view. We developed both virtual and physical versions of the transparent display, which show information related to the lifting capacity and its influencing factors. The virtual version was developed using the Unity game engine with the data from the official load charts for a specific mobile crane model were incorporated into the mobile crane simulation. The physical version was made using off-the-shelves items, such as glasses, LEDs, super glues, insulated copper wires, and an Arduino. We then connected the virtual transparent display with its physical counterpart using an asset called Uduino, which enabled the Unity game engine to send data to the Arduino. The result in this study showed that the virtual transparent display and its real counterpart were functioning as what we intended. The developed prototype would be used in future user evaluations, thus we could determine to what extent this approach would affect the operators' performance and experience.

Keywords: Human-machine interface; Head-up display; Transparent display; Prototype; Mobile cranes; Heavy machinery