Developing Design Guidelines For Augmented Reality Applications As Operating Assistance For Manufacturing Machines

In the manufacturing industry, production costs, time, and quality are directly linked to the effectiveness and efficiency of human-machine interaction. The advanced digitalization of machinery continues to increase the number of interaction elements provided by a human-machine interface. At the same time, a growing shortage of skilled workers intensifies the need to support users in carrying out their work steps with machinery. Augmented Reality (AR) technology has demonstrated high potential for enhancing process efficiency and effectiveness. There are various domains, such as assembly applications or service tasks, in which AR applications provide users with supporting information during the execution of their tasks. In the field of manufacturing machinery, there is a lack of approaches addressing the development of AR applications which assist and guide the operator throughout their tasks. Therefore, this paper presents a set of guidelines for developing assistance AR applications used in the operation of manufacturing machines. This set of guidelines was developed based on scientific literature and challenges in the field of manufacturing machinery. Finally, the guidelines were applied based on an exemplary use case comprising the development of an AR assistance application in order to validate the applicability and practicability of the guidelines. The validation also included user testing of the application.