DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION OF AN AUGMENTED REALITY INTRODUCTORY EXPERIENCE FOR MECHANICAL ENGINEERING FRESHMAN STUDENTS

Industry 4.0 is driving innovation at companies and in education. As more Industry 4.0 tools and technologies become accessible, engineering programs need to expose their students to these tools and technologies to better equip them to start their engineering careers. In support of this goal, the Mechanical Engineering (ME) program at Texas State University (TXST) included basic practical experiences involving selected Industry 4.0 tools in a freshman-level lab. One of those experiences uses Microsoft's HoloLens 2 to introduce students to Augmented Reality (AR). Since AR devices are an emerging technology, the software applications currently available for devices like the HoloLens 2 are not cost-effective for implementing them in most academic courses or labs. To overcome this challenge, the ME program at TXST developed an AR application for the freshman-level lab using the Unity development platform. For that purpose, the CAD model of a product was created using SolidWorks, converted using Blender, and brought into the AR application that was developed. This paper presents the process and technical challenges of implementing the AR experience in the freshman-level lab and discusses student feedback and the plans for improving the application in the future. The authors hope that this information is useful for other mechanical engineering undergraduate programs that want to include AR experiences in the curriculum.