Augmented Reality-Based Manual Assembly Support With Visual Features for Different Degrees of Difficulty

This research investigates different visual features for augmented reality (AR)-based assembly instructions. Since the beginning of AR research, one of its most popular application areas has been manual assembly assistance. A typical AR assembly application indicates the necessary manual assembly operations by generating visual representations of parts that are spatially registered with, and superimposed on, a video representation of the physical product to be assembled. Research in this area indicates the advantages of this type of assembly instruction presentation. This research investigates different types of visual features for different assembly operations. The hypothesis is that in order to gain an advantage from AR, the visual features used to explain a particular assembly operation must correspond to its relative difficulty level. The final goal is to associate different types of visual features to different levels of task complexity. A user study has been conducted in order to compare different visual features at different operation complexity levels. The results support the hypothesis.