- Project number: F 2517
- Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA)
- Status: Completed Project
Description:
Factories will be even more flexible in the future than they are today. They will manufacture individual, one-off products and achieve higher levels of productivity. This will also intensify the demands on workers. Modern augmented reality (AR) assistance systems are to be integrated as effectively as possible into these production and service processes to support employees. This will require suitable virtual elements to be created for each specific working environment. The utilisation of AR in assistance systems is intended to improve the new production and service processes. At the same time, it is important to ensure appropriate ergonomics regarding the hardware and software to increase user acceptance.
The aim of the secureAR collaborative research project was to investigate and develop innovative services in industrial production environments. The results of research done in the AR field were translated into applicable solutions. A cloud-based service platform with open interfaces for various industrial sectors was made available for this purpose. The service platform gathers data along the whole value chain from planning to production processes and system maintenance. It allows the localised, situational provision and visualisation of data with the aid of an innovative AR assistance system.
The contribution made by the Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (Bundesanstalt für Arbeitsschutz und Arbeitsmedizin, BAuA) consisted in the development, trialling, and ergonomic examination of solutions at the industrial enterprises that participated in the project. Ergonomic analyses, interviews, and questionnaires were used to evaluate aspects such as usability, benefits, acceptance, and mental strain from an employee perspective. The project’s findings will help ensure workplaces are safe, healthy, and competitive as the digital transformation progresses.
The results show: AR-based data glasses have great potential to present information for employees in the workplace in ways that meet their needs. A context-of-use analysis made it clear that, firstly, early employee participation in the selection or development and implementation of suitable technical assistance systems is significant. Secondly, an appropriate task-technology fit is important for the acceptance and benefits of new technologies. Furthermore, the results indicate that employees feel AR-based data glasses support them in their work when these devices supply the information they require on site and enable quick access to necessary data. If AR-based data glasses are to be used in everyday working life, they should in particular be easy to use and individually customisable with intuitively learnable interfaces, lightweight and comfortable to wear, and have stable, reliable operating systems. At the same time it became apparent that AR’s potential for human-centred work design as a mobile digital assistance system seems not to have been exploited to the full as yet. Two reasons for this could be the low level of awareness of AR and the fact that the technology is not yet entirely mature.
This project was funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, BMBF) under the Internet-based Services for Complex Products, Production Processes and Production Systems (Smart Services) programme (Funding Code FKZ 02K18D011) and coordinated by Project Management Agency Karlsruhe (PTKA).