Identification of flange specification in real industrial settings with human reasoning assisted by augmented reality

Flange is an important component that connects pressure pipes in livelihood and industrial facilities. The specification information for a flange installed a long time ago is often unavailable or was never recorded. Precision measurement for determining the specification requires detaching the flange from connecting pipes, thus interrupting the facility’s operation. Computer vision techniques cannot guarantee reliable results for mounted flanges that are partially occluded or damaged in real environments. This study develops a new solution, augmented reality (AR)-based recognizer of flange specification (ARFS), to overcome these difficulties. This solution combines human spatial reasoning and computational intelligence in AR to distinguish multiple flanges of similar sizes in complex and uncertain on-site situations. We conducted evaluation experiments to design user interfaces for measuring key flange dimensions in AR. A usability test compares the measuring time and accuracy of the solution implemented on a handheld versus a head-mounted display device. Real-world testing confirms that deploying ARFS as a smartphone app provides an economic yet effective tool for smart asset management in the construction and infrastructure industries.