An introduction to Augmented Reality with applications in aeronautical maintenance

Augmented Reality is a breakthrough technology that could considerably ease execution of complex operations. Augmented Reality mixes virtual and actual reality, making available to the user new tools to ensure efficiency in the transfer of knowledge for several processes and in several environments. Various solutions based on Augmented Reality have been proposed by the research community: particularly in maintenance operations Augmented Reality tools have offered new perspectives and have promised dramatic improvements. On the other side Augmented Reality is an extremely demanding technology and, at the present day, it is still affected by serious flaws that undermine its implementations in the industrial context. This paper presents examples of Augmented Reality applications and shows the feasibility of Augmented Reality solutions in maintenance tasks, underlining advantages it could introduce. At the same time the principal flaws of Augmented Reality are commented and possible lines of investigation are suggested.