Mixed reality system for industrial environment: an evaluation study

Abstract

Enabling technologies for augmented reality (AR)/mixed reality have been improved and refined throughout the last years and more recently they seem to have finally passed the demo stage to become ready for practical industrial and commercial applications. But what are the measurable advantages in using them? This study tries to answer this question by presenting the results of a comprehensive evaluation study conducted in a real industrial environment on the widest number of real users involved in such kind of experiment so far. The assessment concerned an AR-based guidance system for assisting technicians during servicing operations on complex electronic equipment often featuring small components sometimes with a distance of a few millimetres for the ones from the others. The authors exploited the most referenced and acknowledged metrics available in literature for both objective and subjective evaluation of the data gathered, providing a detailed report about the users’ experience, to finally shed light on the real benefits of AR to the industry and on the limits still present.

Keywords

• augmented reality
• industrial environment
• AR-based guidance system
• augmented reality-mixed reality
• assisting technicians
• electronic equipment
• users experience