Haptic Augmented Reality (HapticAR) for assembly guidance

Abstract

The use of Augmented Reality (AR) to support assembly tasks has been an area of interest from its origins in the 90s. Since then, the benefits that this technology could bring to assembly-related tasks have been shown. And, although several advances have been done in different areas such as software, hardware, and human interaction, there are still some problems that have not allowed AR to expand and reach its full potential. Thereby, authors propose a real-time vibrotactile guidance method based on the Gestalt continuity principle and developed a Haptic Augmented Reality application with a low-cost configuration to evaluate the support of the proposed method in assembly tasks. Thus, it potentially overcomes the existing visual issues of AR allowing the user to focus on the task and avoid over-reliance into the technology. The proposed system recognizes the different parts and sub-assemblies, generates the instructions to perform the assembly based on the target position and rotation of each part and verifies the assembly. Additionally, a test was conducted to guide the user in positioning a part, obtaining a high accuracy of rotation and location placement. Also, different functions of the application were tested and the results are suitable for supporting the user guidance.

Study of Augmented Reality Based Manufacturing for Further Integration of Quality Control 4.0: A Systematic Literature Review

“…This innovates regarding the interaction of humans with digital information and the real world. There are different types of augmented information, which are visual augmentation [8], audio [10], haptic feedback [11] and multimodal feedback [12]. AR applications based on visual augmentation are currently dominant in the manufacturing context.…”

Haptic Training Simulation

“…The difficulty here is that the gestures to learn involve the synchronization of both hands, and therefore, the use of two synchronized haptic interfaces. Most widespread applications correspond to tasks of assembly (Abidi et al, 2019, Arbeláez et al, 2019, Garbaya et al, 2019, disassembly (Yang et al, 2019), and also maintenance (Neges et al, 2018, Numfu et al, 2019 which are still nowadays particularly manually operated. Loch et al reviewed the research about haptic training on manual manufacturing procedures in Loch et al (2018).…”

Effectiveness of Augmented Reality Guides for Blind Insertion Tasks

“…Therefore, AR-based assembly guidance has demonstrated its effectiveness compared with classic assistance methods (digital and paper manuals) such as time and error rate reduction and increased user acceptance. Displaying directly the information to the user, it is possible to avoid the attention swapping, the execution of repetitive movements and, at the same time, simplifying user's decisions (Tang et al, 2003;Yuan et al, 2008;Henderson and Feiner, 2011;Arbeláez et al, 2019).…”

“…Among them, the use of haptic technology to provide more realistic feedback during the assembly process, such as feeling the weight of the parts to be assembled or the contact force when objects collide (Seth et al, 2006). Other researches also suggested the use of haptics to define virtual constraint guidance-for example when wearing gloves (Valentini, 2009), or using vibrotactile feedback (Arbeláez et al, 2019)-, which helps operators to find the right alignment on the assembly constraint (Tching et al, 2010;Wildenbeest et al, 2012).…”