Augmented reality smart glasses as assembly operator support : Towards a framework for enabling industrial integration

Sammanfattning: Operators are likely to continue to play an integral part in industrial assembly for the foreseeable future. This is in part because increasingly shorter life-cycles and increased variety of products makes automation harder to achieve. As technological advancements enables greater digitalization, the demands for increased individual designs of products increases. These changes, combined with a global competition, does put an increasing strain on operators to handle large quantities of information in a short timeframe. Augmented reality (AR) has been identified as a technology that can present assembly information to operators in an efficient manner. AR smart glasses (ARSG) is an implementation of AR suitable for operators since they are hands-free and can provide individual instructions in the correct context directly in their real work environment. There are currently early adopters of ARSG in production within industry and there are many predictions that ARSG usage will continue to grow. However, to fully integrate ARSG as a tool among others in a modern and complex factory there are several perspectives that a company need to take into consideration. This thesis investigates both the operator perspective and the manufacturing engineering perspective to support industry in how to make the correct investment decisions as regards to ARSG.The aim of this licentiate thesis is to provide a basis for a framework to enable industry to choose and integrate ARSG in production as a value adding operator support. This is achieved by investigating the theoretical basis of ARSG related technology and its maturity as well as the needs operators have in ARSG for their usage in assembly. The philosophical paradigm that is followed is that of pragmatism. The methodology used is design science, set in the research paradigm of mixed methods. Data has been collected through experiments with demonstrators, interviews, observations, and literature reviews. This thesis provides partial answers to the overall research aim.The thesis shows that the topic is feasible, relevant to industry, and a novel scientific contribution. Observations, interviews, and a literature review gave an overview of the operator perspective. Some highlights from the results are that operators are willing to work with ARSG, that operators need help in unlearning old tasks as well as learning new ones, and that optimal weight distribution of ARSG is dependent on the operators’ head-positioning. Highlights from the preliminary findings for the manufacturing engineering perspective include a general lack of standards for AR as regards vertical industrial application, improved tools for faster instruction generation, and large variations in specifications of available ARSG.Future work includes a complete answer to the manufacturing engineering perspective as well as combining all the results to create a framework for ARSG integration in industry.