Collaborative Research: FW-HTF-P: IntelEUI: Artificial Intelligence and Extended Reality to Enhance Workforce Productivity for the Energy and Utilities Industry

Emerging computing technologies have been recently employed for industrial training and predictive maintenance in several industries to improve workforce productivity and increase manufacturing and production. However, there is limited adoption of technologies in Energy and Utilities Industries (EUIs). There is also a wide gap between the jobs to be filled and the skilled pool capable of filling them in EUIs.

Additionally, the aging workforce is creating a risk of losing workers with hands-on field expertise. Maintaining contemporary equipment for power generation, storage, transmission, and distribution in EUIs is expensive and arduous as they are more versatile and inherently complicated. Therefore, challenges arise for their efficient and productive maintenance.

The project aims to design a framework that will meet the needs of smart training and predictive maintenance in EUIs by employing emerging technologies and develop a working prototype of the framework. The project investigators collaborate with EUIs to design the framework. In the long-term, the improved training will reduce the skill gap between skilled and less-skilled workers and increase situational awareness and safety in the workplace.

The predictive maintenance model will reduce costs by predicting maintenance needs and downtime of equipment.

The project integrates cutting-edge technologies in the framework design and development including Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), and Extended Reality (XR) to improve workforce productivity through customizable and effective training, enhance work efficiency, and reduce cost on unplanned maintenance. State-of-the-art ML methods will be applied to develop the predictive maintenance module of the framework to improve reliability and sustainability of various equipment in EUIs that will eventually save time, human efforts, and increase customer satisfaction.

Comprehensive measures and metrics will be employed to assess the technology, economic, and social impact of the framework in the industry context. A set of research questions is proposed to understand how AI and XR technology is transforming work and workforce in EUIs. The project findings will be disseminated to the academic and industry community through a dedicated website, research publications, and social media platforms.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.