The presentation of the project “The technician 4.0 in the fourth industrial revolution: an augmented, virtual and secure environment” took place at our headquarters in Gijón on the subject of the FEDER Asturias 21-27 Monitoring Committee.

TSK has carried out this project together with TKE (Thyssenkrupp), PixelsHub and Onirix, forming a consortium whose objective was to exert a tractor effect on the rest of the companies in the region, jointly building an innovative ecosystem around the “Technician 4.0” concept.

The “Technician 4.0” project aims to contribute to improve the daily tasks of our operators and technicians of industrial facilities through different prototypes of analysis and evaluation of new technologies and especially immersive technologies such as augmented or virtual reality.

It was born with the idea of evolving the term Industry 4.0, a term that focuses on new technologies, to the concept of “Technician 4.0”, placing these technologies at the service of the operator or industrial technician and allowing them to both help them in the performance of their work and improve their safety. Work has been carried out along the entire industrial value chain, especially in operation and maintenance services, training and design.

The project revolved around three main points that result in improved products and processes:

• Design and prototyping services based on virtual environments that allow the improvement of product design and communication between technicians and stakeholders.
• Training services based on cutting-edge technologies that allow technical training overcoming language barriers with a clear focus on gamification.
• Digital assistance services in operation and maintenance that support the 4.0 technician in the execution of this type of tasks, guaranteeing their safety and providing them with new communication and visualization interfaces.

– Thanks to research, the “Technician 4.0” will have at its disposal innovative technologies that will allow it to perform its tasks more efficiently and safely, combining the intelligence of the internet of things and the virtual world in a real environment, revolutionizing, among others, the way of operating and maintaining equipment and facilities.

The project was TSK’s first experience in the field of immersive technologies. Since then, its application has been extended within the group’s projects both in the field of training and operation as well as for intelligent monitoring during the execution and start-up phase of the projects. In the words of Juan Luis Carús, director of Innovacion Digital: “This project allowed us to plant a seed thanks to which we have been able to build solutions with which we are improving our efficiency throughout the life cycle of our projects, from the design to the commissioning of our plants”.