Offshore staff
DHAHRAN, Saudi Arabia – Aramco Asia has deployed a ‘smart helmet’ to remotely monitor equipment and material fabrication activities in South Korea.
This involved attaching a hands-free Android tablet class wearable computer to a regular industrial helmet.
The helmet, which employs voice recognition software, allows the user to perform tasks such as document and screen sharing, high-resolution image capturing, video recording, and real-time augmented reality mark-up for remote guidance.
According to Saudi Aramco, it also enables multiple people to remotely run multiple support sessions at one time, thereby circumventing COVID-19 restrictions.
Aramco Asia-Korea representative director Fahad A. Al-Sahali said the technology helps the company reliably and safely sustain operations by increasing on-the-spot audits to monitor materials fabrication activities and expediting related urgent assessment processes.
In South Korea, the company’s engineers used the smart helmet to remotely assess a potential new manufacturer based in Ulsan that produces straight seam pipes.
Technical and inspection assessors from Saudi Aramco Consulting Services in Dhahran and Aramco Asia Engineering and Technical Services in Seoul collaborated remotely with manufacturer representatives through live streaming.
In addition, Aramco has applied the technology for supervising inspection and mechanical testing for purchase orders for projects such as the Marjan Increment Program offshore eastern Saudi Arabia.
06/03/2020
