Augmented reality in the psychomotor phase of a procedural task

Procedural tasks are common to many domains, ranging from maintenance and repair, to medicine, to the arts. We describe and evaluate a prototype augmented reality (AR) user interface designed to assist users in the relatively under-explored psychomotor phase of procedural tasks. In this phase, the user begins physical manipulations, and thus alters aspects of the underlying task environment. Our prototype tracks the user and multiple components in a typical maintenance assembly task, and provides dynamic, prescriptive, overlaid instructions on a see-through head-worn display in response to the user's ongoing activity. A user study shows participants were able to complete psychomotor aspects of the assembly task significantly faster and with significantly greater accuracy than when using 3D-graphics-based assistance presented on a stationary LCD. Qualitative questionnaire results indicate that participants overwhelmingly preferred the AR condition, and ranked it as more intuitive than the LCD condition.