Industrial augmented reality (AR) is an integral part of Industry 4.0 concepts, as it enables workers to access digital information and overlay that information with the physical world. While not being broadly adopted in some applications, the compound annual growth rate of the industrial AR market is projected to grow rapidly. Hence, it is important to understand the issues arising from implementation of AR in industry. This study identifies critical success factors and challenges for industrial AR implementation projects, based on an industry survey. The broadly used technology, organisation, environment (TOE) framework is used as a theoretical basis for the quantitative part of the questionnaire. A complementary qualitative part is used to underpin and extend the findings. It is found that, while technological aspects are of importance, organisational issues are more relevant for industry, which has not been reflected to the same extent in literature.

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Augmented reality in support of Industry 4.0—Implementation challenges and success factors

Augmented reality in support of intelligent manufacturing - a systematic literature review

A performance measurement system for industry 4.0 enabled smart manufacturing system in SMMEs- A review and empirical investigation

Augmented Reality (AR), is one of the most promising technology for technical manuals in the context of Industry 4.0. However, the implementation of AR documentation in industry is still challenging because specific standards and guidelines are missing. In this work, we propose a novel methodology for the conversion of existing “traditional” documentation, and for the authoring of new manuals in AR in compliance to Industry 4.0 principles. The methodology is based on the optimization of text usage with the ASD Simplified Technical English, the conversion of text instructions into 2D graphic symbols, and the structuring of the content through the combination of Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and Information Mapping (IM). We tested the proposed approach with a case study of a maintenance manual of hydraulic breakers. We validated it with a user test collecting subjective feedbacks of 22 users. The results of this experiment confirm that the manual obtained using our methodology is clearer than other templates.

Towards Augmented Reality manuals for Industry 4.0: a methodology

Industry 4.0: Emerging themes and future research avenues using a text mining approach

Augmented reality (AR) is a key technology for the development of smart manufacturing. One of the main advantages of AR is that it can help workers to accomplish several tasks, making it possible the shift from mass production to mass customization. However, it is still not clear how these promises can be fulfilled in an industrial scenario. In particular, the question about which display solutions fit better the industrial constraints remains open. Based on the literature overview, laboratory experiments, and feedbacks from industrial companies, we supported the use of spatial augmented reality (SAR), designing a prototype intended to be used for manual working stations of the future smart factories. This work presents the evaluation of the effectiveness of conveying technical instructions with this SAR prototype as compared to paper manual. We run a within-subjects experiment with 16 participants to measure user task performance (completion times and error rates) and to collect subjective evaluation. We projected technical information on a motorbike engine during a seven-task maintenance procedure. Our results proved that SAR technology improves the operators’ performance with respect to a paper manual and that users well accept it. We found that SAR is more effective for difficult tasks than for simple ones and that the main advantage of SAR is related more to the reduction of error rates than to completion times. These results confirm the goodness of our design choices; then our prototype can be a valid candidate solution for a smart manufacturing application.

Daniele Spagnulo

Papers

Evaluating the effectiveness of spatial augmented reality in smart manufacturing: a solution for manual working stations