A Hybrid User Interface Combining AR, Desktop, and Mobile Interfaces for Enhanced Industrial Robot Programming

Robot programming for complex assembly tasks is challenging and demands expert knowledge. With Augmented Reality (AR), immersive 3D visualization can be placed in the robot's intrinsic coordinate system to support robot programming. However, AR interfaces introduce usability challenges. To address these, we introduce a hybrid user interface (HUI) that combines a 2D desktop, a smartphone, and an AR head-mounted display (HMD) application, enabling operators to choose the most suitable device for each sub-task. The evaluation with an expert user study shows that an HUI can enhance efficiency and user experience by selecting the appropriate device for each sub-task. Generally, the HMD is preferred for tasks involving 3D content, the desktop for creating the program structure and parametrization, and the smartphone for mobile parametrization. However, the device selection depends on individual user characteristics and their familiarity with the devices.