In the emerging field of close human-robotcollaboration the human worker needs to be able to quickly and easily understand data of the robotic system. To achieve this even for untrained personnel, we propose the use of a Spatial Augmented Reality system to project the necessary information directly into the users' workspace. The projection system consists of a fixed as well as a mobile projector mounted directly on the manipulator, allowing for visualizing data anywhere in the surroundings of the robot. By enabling the user to simply see the necessary complex information he can better understand the data and behavior of the robotic assistant and has the opportunity to analyze and potentially optimize the working process. Together with an input device, arbitrary interfaces can be realized with the projection system.
In order to support the decision-making process of industry on how to implement Augmented Reality (AR) in production, this article wants to provide guidance through a set of comparative user studies. The results are obtained from the feedback of 160 participants who performed the same repair task on a switch cabinet of an industrial robot. The studies compare several AR instruction applications on different display devices (head-mounted display, handheld tablet PC and projection-based spatial AR) with baseline conditions (paper instructions and phone support), both in a single-user and a collaborative setting. Next to insights on the performance of the individual device types for the single mode operation, the study is able to show significant indications on AR techniques are being especially helpful in a collaborative setting.
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