Augmented Reality for Digital Manufacturing

The focus of this paper is on enhancing the possibilities of manufacturing operations by taking advantage of augmented reality (AR) technology and highlighting its benefits by implementing a product manufacturing case. The latter appearance of augmented headsets, such as the Microsoft HoloLens allows more opportunities for creating innovative solutions. After introducing concepts about smart manufacturing, improvements regarding human-robot collaboration in assembly tasks are presented. The developed scenario is based on the integration of AR, a cobot, a see-through device, a digital twin and an algorithm for assembly visualization. This approach pledges a compelling interaction of the 3D real and virtual unit, so that the operator can work in a more intuitive environment. This methodology has been implemented on a assembly case to investigate users' enhanced perception using the virtual world while cooperating with the robot.