Towards Asynchronous Mixed Reality Remote Guidance supported by a Virtual Assistant: Proposal of a Conceptual Model

Activities of remote guidance are essential in the Industry sector to overcome emerging problems. One important technology to cre-ate a common ground between distributed team-members is Mixed Reality (MR). On-site collaborators can receive instructions from remote experts, informing where to act, and what to do. Neverthe-less, most studies have focused on synchronous use-cases, where team-members can interact in real-time. Hence, an opportunity exists to explore asynchronous scenarios, in which collaborative actions take place at different times. This position paper proposes a vision for combining MR and a Virtual Assistant (VA) for sup-porting asynchronous remote guidance in Industrial Scenarios. This combination can be highly flexible in supporting most simpler tasks, taking advantage of existing instructions from previous sessions. Also important, a VA can be constantly available, reducing time-to-response, while supporting various individuals with distinct needs. These and other arguments in favor of this position are presented and future directions are proposed.