The market is demanding a change in the model of customer support, which is more effective and sustainable. Many technology companies dedicated to the design and manufacture of equipment for Industry 4.0 – such as artificial vision equipment, special test machines, quality control systems, etc. – need to make the final adjustments to the machine, possible calibrations, verifications, etc., on site at the place where the equipment is installed. To complete these turnkey projects, it is currently necessary for the experts who have designed and programmed the machine to act once it has been installed, with the consequent investment in time and resources (travel costs, technical staff hours, opportunity cost of not having that technician available for other projects, etc.).

HERMES is the project that proposes to implement a solution based on augmented reality and collaborative robots, which will allow experts to interact with local operators thousands of kilometres away to make the final adjustments and complete the installation of a piece of equipment, as well as its subsequent maintenance.

To carry out this research, a consortium of three technology supplier companies, VISIONA, ROBOTNIK and Fivecomm, and a user company of this technology, Metro Ligero Oeste, has been formed and is coordinated by secpho.

The project has been a beneficiary of the Next Generation EU funds channelled by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism within the support programme for Innovative Business Groups, whose objective is to digitalise industry.

It is now being presented to the secpho ecosystem through an informative session, in which the terms of the research and the results obtained in this project will be made known.