Introductory Analysis of Augmented Reality in Product Assembly

Augmented Reality (AR) has proven to be an efficient alternative in the support of some of the challenges that face the modern manufacturing by allowing to display context-related information directly to the user while he or she is carrying out a task. Nevertheless, nowadays AR has not succeeded in breaking out of the laboratories and establish as a strong solution in industry. Mainly because of technical problems (such as object recognition, registration, calibration and tracking) and ergonomic factors (such as user interaction, interface and adaptability). In this paper an introduction through the different issues and current challenges to implement an AR in industry are summarized. Subsequently the requirements and state of art regarding of product assembly is presented and finally a conceptual proposal of AR applied to an assembly process is shown. The purpose of this publication is to summarize the state of the art and present a general AR approach to flexible support of “navigability” of a user through an assembly sequence, as an improvement and not as a definitive solution to use out of laboratory.