Industrial augmented reality
[1] The use of IAR dates back to the 1990s with the work of Thomas Caudell and David Mizell about the application of AR at Boeing.
[3][4][5] Some challenging factors of IAR development are related to the necessary interdisciplinarity knowledge in areas such as object recognition, computer graphics, artificial intelligence and human-computer-interaction.
[8] Although the origins of augmented reality dates from the 1960s, when Ivan Sutherland created the first head-mounted display [9] it did not gain strength until the early 1990s, when the David Mizell and Thomas Caudell developed the first industrial AR at Boeing.
They used a head-mounted display (HMD) to superimpose a computer-generated diagram of the manufacturing process with a real-time world registration and the user's head position calculation.
Some important groups were funded:[10] the largest consortium for IAR backed by the German's Federal Ministry of Education and Research (ARVIKA), with the aim of researching and implementing AR in relevant German industries,;[15] the European Community founded several projects including Service and Training through (STAR), which is a collaboration between institutes and companies from Europe and the US,[16] and Advanced Augmented Reality Technologies for Industrial Service Applications (ARTESAS) derived from ARVIKA, focused on the development of AR for automotive and aerospace maintenance.
Some of them are directly related with the performance of the software and hardware that enable the deployment of AR, such as displays, sensors, processors, recognition, tracking, registration among others.
[22] Some common unsolved issues concern tracking systems suited for industrial scenarios which mean: poorly textured objects with smooth surfaces and strong light variation; object recognition using natural features when it is not possible to use markers;[7] the improvement of accuracy and latency of registration,[4] and 3D context scene capture to allow context awareness.
[27] Even though nowadays many assembly operations are automated, some of them still require human assistance as, in many cases, their bits of information are detached from the equipment.
Thus it is necessary to alternate their attention which leads to decreasing productivity and increasing of errors and injuries[18] The use of AR is encouraged by the premise that instructions might be easier to understand if instead of being available as manuals they are super imposed upon the actual equipment.
[29] Like assembly, maintenance serves as a natural application for AR because it requires keeping the user's attention on a specific area and the synthesis of additional information such as complex sequences, component identification, and textual data.
[30] Furthermore, the efficiency and speed of maintenance processes can be improved through AR by quickly displaying relevant information about an unfamiliar piece of equipment to a technician.
[31] Similarly, AR can support maintenance tasks by acting as an "x-ray" like vision, or providing information from sensors directly to the user.
AR can be used to immediately display the diagnosis on the engine[3] Many industries are required to perform complex activities that needs previous training.
But in industrial field, performance is a main goal, and therefore has been an extensive research about the presentation of virtual components in AR regarding the type of the task.
