A mixed reality platform for assembly assistance based on gaze interaction in industry

摘要

A novel platform for remote collaboration is proposed in this paper. This platform makes it possible for an expert to assist a worker for industrial assembly task in different places. Our goal is to compare the effect of sharing head pointer in a SAR remote collaboration with AR annotations in manufacturing. First, we develop an AR remote collaborative platform. This platform implements sharing a remote expert's head pointer instead of eye gaze. Then, we evaluate the prototype system comparing two conditions through a user study, AR annotations and gaze cues (GC), relating to their effectiveness in the assembly efficiency, numbers of incorrect operation, workload, and collaborative experience. The results show that sharing head pointer can improve performance, co-presence awareness, and user collaborative experiences and decreases the numbers of incorrect operations. More importantly, we implement GC visualization in low-cost head tracking and find that it acts as a good referential pointing. Therefore, head pointer could be a competent representation of GC in AR/MR remote collaboration for assembly assistance. Our research has a great practical significance for the industrial application of GC-based AR/MR remote collaboration.