A systematic review of augmented reality applications in maintenance

Augmented Reality (AR) technologies for supporting maintenance operations have been an academic research topic for around 50 years now. In the last decade, major progresses have been made and the AR technology is getting closer to being implemented in industry. In this paper, the advantages and disadvantages of AR have been explored and quantified in terms of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) for industrial maintenance. Unfortunately, some technical issues still prevent AR from being suitable for industrial applications. This paper aims to show, through the results of a systematic literature review, the current state of the art of AR in maintenance and the most relevant technical limitations. The analysis included filtering from a large number of publications to 30 primary studies published between 1997 and 2017. The results indicate a high fragmentation among hardware, software and AR solutions which lead to a high complexity for selecting and developing AR systems. The results of the study show the areas where AR technology still lacks maturity. Future research directions are also proposed encompassing hardware, tracking and user-AR interaction in industrial maintenance is proposed

Leveraging Augmented Reality for Real-time Operational Performance Management

Augmented Reality (AR) projects a virtual overlay onto real space so that the user can see a superimposed image over the real-world background. Although AR has advanced recently and a breadth of applications can be found in practice, they are focused on simple tasks with few examples of more complex work tasks. One area that could benefit from advancing AR technology is operations management, specifically operational performance measurement (OPM); however, a brief review of the literature reveals that this potential application area has not yet been explored. Therefore, the purpose of this work is to investigate the application of AR technology to OPM to improve real-time decision-making and management practice. A systematic literature review was conducted to evaluate the current application areas related to management practices. This review did not identify any studies related to using AR to support OPM, but did identify many applications relevant to management activities that empirically demonstrate the benefit of adoption. The review analyzed the current development in this research area and how it has matured including evaluating the applications discussed in the identified publications to demonstrate the existing gap in the research related to OPM applications. An expert study was then conducted to explore potential challenges and benefits of such a device as well as to operationally define effective decision-making for operations managers. The results of the expert study were leveraged to develop a Design of Experiments based laboratory study to empirically test the effects of an AR supported environment on decision-making effectiveness and operational performance. The results showed that the AR device supported improved operational performance, but did not show a significant effect on participants\u27 perceived decision-making effectiveness. This study contributes to the academic literature on technology-enabled OPM and managerial decision-making as well as providing insights for industry professionals interested in adopting AR to support management functions

Interactive control of manufacturing assemblies with Mixed Reality

The aim of this work is an efficien methodology development for a real-time control of human assembling sequences of mechanical components. The method involves a CAD environment, an hardware system, referred to as a PAA (Personal Active Assistant), and a set of Mixed Reality features. The whole scheme is targeted to positively influence the connection between CAD and Mixed Reality in order to proficiently reduce the gap between engineers and manual operators. The system is based on a CAD assembly module and on a Mixed Reality wearable equipment. It can be used to improve several activities in the industrial field, such as operator professional training, optimal assembly sequence seeking or on-field teleconferencing (suitable for remote collaboration or for full exploitation of Concurrent Engineering suggestions during design and set up stages). The main characteristic o PAA is a real-time wireless linkage to a remote servere or designer workstation, where project geometric database is stored. The Mixed Reality wearable equipment consists of an optical see-through display device and a PAA head-mounted camera. The user can freely operate in the mixed environment, while the camera can record the human driven assembly sequence and check the efficiency and correctness via object recognition: an incrementally sub-assembly detection algorithm has been developed in order to achieve complex dataset monitoring. Conversely, designer or assembly planner can exploit the peculiarities of Mixed Reality-based assembly: a straightforward interaction with assembly operator can be obtained by sending vocal advices or by displaying superimposed visual information on the real scene. In the paper a new method for CAD models and Mixed Reality environment integration will be presented and discussed in order to improve and simplify personnel training or warehouse part seeking