A multimodal context aware mobile maintenance terminal for noisy environments

Abstract

Maintenance workers in the oil and process industry have typically had minimal IT support, relying on paper-based solutions both for the information they need to bring into the field and for data capture. This paper proposes a mobile context aware system for maintenance work based on electronically tagged equipment and handheld wireless terminals with a multimodal user interface. Particular attention has been given to voice interaction in noisy industrial scenarios, utilising the PARAT earplug. A proof-of-concept demonstrator of the system has been developed. The paper presents the demonstrator architecture and experiences gained through this work. © 2005 by International Federation for Information Processing.