Whitepaper: Industrial Suitability of Mobile HMIs

The state of maturity of mobile devices & wearables, to support shop floor workers while performing their tasks.

Abstract

One of the dimensions of the Industry 4.0 vision is the focus on the role of shop floor workers. In order to empower shop floor workers to take full advantage of their skills and knowledge and of the information which is gathered from machines, several mobile solutions aim to support the ubiquitous real time access to information and collaboration functionalities.

Smartphones, tablets, smart glasses, smartwatches and hearables are technologies which, alone or in combination, seem to be on the way to allow user friendly interaction with digital information. But are they mature enough? Under which conditions do they work correctly? And most importantly in this context, can they be applied on the industrial shop floor?

This Whitepaper provides an overview of evaluation results regarding the “industry readiness” of mobile devices, whereas some are already marketable and others are still under development.