AIM Shows How Augmented Reality Can Transform Day-to-Day Utility Operations
Power lines, water mains and data conduits run beneath every street and substation, yet locating and servicing them remains a daily challenge for utility crews. The AIM project — Augmented-Reality-Assisted Infrastructure Management — leverages the open-source SERMAS Toolkit to bring centimetre-accurate asset maps, voice-controlled workflows and hands-free documentation into a single, headset-ready application.
What AIM + SERMAS Deliver
- Browser-based holographic overlays powered by SERMAS UI components and rendered in a secure WebView on lightweight smart-glasses.
- Natural-language interaction through the SERMAS Dialogue service, allowing technicians to say “show water pipe” or “next page” while keeping both hands on their tools.
- Centimetre positioning via GNSS-RTK and Galileo OSNMA, ensuring that virtual cables and pipes line up with the ground they occupy.
Why Utilities Care
- Rapid roll-out — because SERMAS runs entirely in standard HTML 5/JavaScript, any Android-XR headset with a WebView can be deployed in minutes.
- Lower total cost — a single web code-base and MDM-driven updates slash development, QA and field-support overheads.
- Open ecosystem — utilities and their IT partners can extend or brand the interface with mainstream web skills, avoiding proprietary lock-in.
- Field-proven accuracy — short-baseline RTK corrections keep overlays rock-solid, from rural solar farms to busy city streets.
From Substations to City Streets
Using nothing more than a smart-glasses WebView connected to the SERMAS server, AIM has already guided crews through locating buried low-voltage cables, avoiding irrigation lines in agricultural land and retrieving equipment manuals inside compact control buildings. Urban trials confirmed that the same workflow holds up amid reflections and heavy traffic.
This project is developed by Xilbi Sistemas de Informacion SL in cooperation with Fotovoltaica Macotera SL.
The AIM project has indirectly received funding from the European Union, via the SERMAS OC2 DEMONSTRATE issued and executed under the SERMAS project (Grant Agreement no. 101070351). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or SERMAS. Neither the European Union nor SERMAS can be held responsible for them.
