Augmenting Human-Machine Teaming Through Industrial AR: Trends and Challenges

Industrial Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging spatial computing technology which involves the use of head-mounted displays or hand-held devices such as tablets or smartphones to superimpose digital content onto the worker’s physical to foster their productivity, learning, and interactions with machines, tools, and other workers. Industrial AR has been adopted in many industries such as manufacturing, healthcare, aerospace, and defense, predominantly for training or remote assistance purposes. Yet, several technical and technological challenges remain to be addressed for industrial AR to evolve from a spatial visualization tool to a more intelligent and adaptive assistive tool that not only augments the spatial and causal reasoning of workers but can also provide them with just-in-time training and support on the job. This chapter provides some technical background on industrial AR and underscores several research and development directions which can potentially materialize this vision.