An authorable context-aware augmented reality system to assist the maintenance technicians

Abstract

The increasing complexity and the technology advancement of equipment pose challenges to the maintenance technicians nowadays. Augmented reality (AR) technology can be used to assist the maintenance technicians by providing useful information through visual interactions, e.g., superimposing the maintenance instructions virtually on the real equipment. However, to improve the usability of the state-of-the-art AR-assisted maintenance systems in routine and ad hoc maintenance activities, the virtual information provided should be adapted to the various contexts, i.e., context relevant. For example, the information provided should accord to the status of the activity and the user’s expertise level. In addition, the rendered AR contents should not be “read-only”, such that the maintenance technicians become passive information receivers. Providing the technicians with the means to interact with the AR contents actively is useful as they can rectify any incorrect AR contents that have been created by the AR developers and author AR contents to record and share the accumulated knowledge and experience on equipment maintenance with other technicians. In this paper, an authorable context-aware AR System (ACARS) is proposed to assist the maintenance technicians. To make ACARS context-aware and authorable, a bi-directional authoring tool, which enables the AR developers to create context-relevant information via a desktop 2D user interface and the maintenance technicians to author AR contents on-site, is proposed. A prototype system has been developed, and a case study has been conducted to demonstrate the usability of ACARS.