Classification of industrial Augmented Reality use cases

Abstract

Abstract Due to rapid technical advancements and the increasing diffusion of information and communications technologies, Augmented Reality (AR) has left its fledgling stages and is now on the verge of a breakthrough. Especially in industrial applications, AR holds great potentials for performance improvements: By enriching real world environments with context-specific virtual information, manual operations can be carried out more efficiently, costly mistakes can be avoided and the mental effort for transferring information from an abstract representation (e.g. monitor) to the physical world can be significantly reduced. However, a lack of transparency regarding the equally numerous and manifold applications and benefits makes it difficult for companies to weigh the impact of AR for their business. Existing classification approaches in scientific literature mainly focus on technical aspects of AR, neglecting information essential for the strategic planning of AR. The current paper aims at filling this gap by providing a classification of industrial AR use cases. The basis is a classification scheme consisting of eight classification criteria, each with several predefined characteristics, specifically tailored to the industrial use of AR. In a comprehensive literature research, 75 industrial application examples for AR were determined and described using the classification scheme. By performing a cluster analysis and multidimensional scaling, the AR application examples were grouped according to their similarity, resulting in 16 clusters, each representing a generic use case for AR. Further information was researched for each use case (e.g. benefits, opportunities, risks) and summarized in a profile. Thus, the paper provides two core results: (1) A classification scheme for describing industrial AR applications, extending the state of the art with an use-case-related classification approach. (2) A catalogue with 16 AR use case profiles, providing transparency on industrial applications and potential benefits of AR and inspiring companies on how to utilize AR for their own business.