Developing Design Guidelines For Augmented Reality Applications As Operating Assistance For Manufacturing Machines

In the manufacturing industry, production costs, time, and quality are directly linked to the effectiveness and efficiency of human-machine interaction. The advanced digitalization of machinery continues to increase the number of interaction elements provided by a human-machine interface. At the same time, a growing shortage of skilled workers intensifies the need to support users in carrying out their work steps with machinery. Augmented Reality (AR) technology has demonstrated high potential for enhancing process efficiency and effectiveness. There are various domains, such as assembly applications or service tasks, in which AR applications provide users with supporting information during the execution of their tasks. In the field of manufacturing machinery, there is a lack of approaches addressing the development of AR applications which assist and guide the operator throughout their tasks. Therefore, this paper presents a set of guidelines for developing assistance AR applications used in the operation of manufacturing machines. This set of guidelines was developed based on scientific literature and challenges in the field of manufacturing machinery. Finally, the guidelines were applied based on an exemplary use case comprising the development of an AR assistance application in order to validate the applicability and practicability of the guidelines. The validation also included user testing of the application

Tutor In-sight: Guiding and Visualizing Students Attention with Mixed Reality Avatar Presentation Tools

Remote conferencing systems are increasingly used to supplement or even replace in-person teaching. However, prevailing conferencing systems restrict the teacher’s representation to a webcam live-stream, hamper the teacher’s use of body-language, and result in students’ decreased sense of co-presence and participation. While Virtual Reality (VR) systems may increase student engagement, the teacher may not have the time or expertise to conduct the lecture in VR. To address this issue and bridge the requirements between students and teachers, we have developed Tutor In-sight, a Mixed Reality (MR) avatar augmented into the student’s workspace based on four design requirements derived from the existing literature, namely: integrated virtual with physical space, improved teacher’s co-presence through avatar, direct attention with auto-generated body language, and usable workfow for teachers. Two user studies were conducted from the perspectives of students and teachers to determine the advantages of Tutor In-sight in comparison to two existing conferencing systems, Zoom (video-based) and Mozilla Hubs (VR-based). The participants of both studies favoured Tutor In-sight. Among others, this main fnding indicates that Tutor Insight satisfed the needs of both teachers and students. In addition, the participants’ feedback was used to empirically determine the four main teacher requirements and the four main student requirements in order to improve the future design of MR educational tools