Evaluation of Wearable Visual Assistance System for Manual Automotive Assembly

Abstract

Automotive manual assembly cannot avoid operations with limited sight for the associate. To complete the process, the associate often must rely on tactile feel or to assume ergonomically challenging positions. This work aims to provide a wearable camera system which can record a field of view near an associate's hand and display it remotely to the associate and determine user preference and acceptance. We present three camera systems: (1) wearable camera with arm wearable display, (2) wearable camera with external stationary display, and (3) wearable camera with smart glasses screen. The conducted evaluations included novice user evaluation of accuracy, timing, user preferences, and other performance results conducted on and off the assembly line providing insight on accuracy, timing, user acceptance, preferences, and performance potential in the production environment. This work is intended to assist assembly associates to better view their work area and to complete tasks faster, more reliably, and with higher quality. Our results show an improvement in performance metrics for novice users, with them experiencing increased accuracy and reduced timing with a positive acceptance rate for assistive technologies.