Unlocking Augmented Interactions in Short-Lived Assembly Tasks

Augmented Reality (AR) has evolved over the past years, but before it is widely adopted and used in manufacturing industry, it has to overcome a number of technological challenges. Although new advancements in tracking and display technology have been a priority in recent research works, the use of accurate registration methods is not fundamental for users to understand the intent of the augmentation. Moreover, interactive visualization of contextual data in augmented spaces did not receive enough attention from the research community. In this paper, we investigate the creation of AR workspaces focused on interaction and visualization modes rather than on the registration accuracy, and how to provide more effective means to support assembly tasks in hybrid human-machine manufacturing lines. In particular, we focus on short-lived assembly tasks, i.e. manufacturing of limited batches of customized products, which do not yield significant returns considering the effort necessary to adapt AR systems and the production time frame.