Practical Insights On Augmented Reality Support for Shop-Floor Tasks

Abstract

The use of Augmented Reality (AR) to improve processes in production has a long history and there are various established use cases in industry and research. Nevertheless, barriers to its seamless integration in everyday shop-floor processes still remain. A holistic approach grounded on socio-technical systems theory and a practical use case in a real-world production environment serve to identify the barriers and to provide recommendations for implementing AR in shop-floor processes. As a starting point, an overview of use cases in industry and research is provided focusing on how AR is used to support shop-floor tasks. Based on this, a practical use case, where maintenance engineers were guided by a head-mounted AR device (Microsoft HoloLens), was implemented to gain insights into the current AR-technology. An experiment was carried out consisting of twelve test runs with six maintenance engineers in a real-world production setting in the automotive industry. Semi-structured interviews with the test persons and video recordings of the tests serve as a basis for data analysis. The results consist primarily of specific use case feedback from test persons and video-based observation findings. Based on these findings, we derived recommendations to seamlessly integrate AR into production processes. These results are structured around enterprise IT infrastructure, AR-technology, shop-floor process related and human-centered aspects.