Maintenance with Augmented Reality Remote Support in Comparison to Paper-Based Instructions: Experiment and Analysis

Basic repair and maintenance tasks of industrial machines are usually performed by local service personnel at the location of the component to be maintained. Complex maintenance tasks require an expert who travels to the customer to solve a specific problem. This process is time and cost intensive. Augmented Reality (AR) Remote Assistance offers means to support newcomers on site by guiding personnel through the maintenance process with novel visualizations. This paper describes an Augmented Reality based remote assistance tool for industrial purposes. We present the technology and our implementation approach, as well as the challenges and limitations we have encountered. The potential of the tool was evaluated and analyzed in an industry oriented use case for repairing an industrial PC. The results were compared with a maintenance procedure that was carried out using standard paper repair instructions. Our approach enabled the users to perform complex tasks faster and with fewer errors. Overall, the error rate decreased significantly due to the AR-based remote support. We also found that paper-based instructions are still more efficient in solving simple tasks.