Spatial Augmented Reality in the Factory: Can In-Situ Projections Be Used to Communicate Dangers and Health Risks?

In the context of industrial settings, extensive research of in-situ projections has proven their benefits for task performance. However, to date, these projections have not explicitly addressed policies designed to mitigate the dangers and health risks that are just as important, if not more than task performance considerations in such settings. We developed in-situ projections for three different use cases: (1) assembly support at a workbench, (2) ergonomic lifting, (3) restricted areas, which we studied with 15 representative target users. We found the expected benefits of the task-supporting projection (use case 1), increasing task performance and causing minimal cognitive load. However, our data also suggest that the other projections (use case 2 and 3) did not improve policy compliance. Our findings indicate that in-situ projections are not the most suitable solution to nudge workers to policy compliance in an industrial assembly setting, as most participants ignored the policy after evaluating the dangers themselves. Furthermore, based on our limitations and findings, we reflect on how current study practices can be improved for ubiquitous systems, especially when aiding policy compliance.