Frontiers in Virtual Reality (Jan 2021)
Methodology for the Field Evaluation of the Impact of Augmented Reality Tools for Maintenance Workers in the Aeronautic Industry
Abstract
Augmented Reality (AR) enhances the comprehension of complex situations by making the handling of contextual information easier. Maintenance activities in aeronautics consist of complex tasks carried out on various high-technology products under severe constraints from the sector and work environment. AR tools appear to be a potential solution to improve interactions between workers and technical data to increase the productivity and the quality of aeronautical maintenance activities. However, assessments of the actual impact of AR on industrial processes are limited due to a lack of methods and tools to assist in the integration and evaluation of AR tools in the field. This paper presents a method for deploying AR tools adapted to maintenance workers and for selecting relevant evaluation criteria of the impact in an industrial context. This method is applied to design an AR tool for the maintenance workshop, to experiment on real use cases, and to observe the impact of AR on productivity and user satisfaction for all worker profiles. Further work aims to generalize the results to the whole maintenance process in the aeronautical industry. The use of the collected data should enable the prediction of the impact of AR for related maintenance activities.
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