Decentralised identification of used exchange parts with a mobile application

Abstract

Sustainable product development and use requires an extended life cycle of used and defective mechanical parts. Remanufacturing saves resources and helps the industry to utilise the product more efficiently. Reverse logistics is one of the most important challenges towards efficient remanufacturing. To improve this process, we propose an on-site part identification at the workshops. A fast on-site identification is essential for assisting repair shop personnel and saving time on searching for the right spare parts. Based on images taken by a mobile device our application provides various machine vision services, e.g., visual identification of used parts, already successfully tested in a sorting facility for remanufacturing parts. The mobile application provides a robust visual identification for different environments. We show that enhancing data for machine vision approaches with images from decentral sensors, i.e., mobile devices, leads to an improved identification accuracy.