Evaluation of Attention Guiding Techniques for Augmented Reality-based Assistance in Picking and Assembly Tasks
Patrick Renner, Thies Pfeiffer · 2017
Intelligent personal assistance systems for manual tasks may support users on multiple levels. A general function is guiding the visual attention of the user towards the item relevant for the next action. This is a challenging task, as the user may be in arbitrary positions and orientations relative to the target. Optical see-through head-mounted-displays (HMDs) present an additional challenge, as the target may be already visible for the user but lie outside the field-of-view of the augmented reality (AR) display. In the context of a smart glasses-based assistance system for a manual assembly station, we evaluated five different visual attention guidance techniques for optical see-through devices. We found that combined directional and positional in-situ guidance performs best overall, but that performance depends on target location. The study is our first realization of a simulated AR methodology in which we create a repeatable and highly-controlled experimental design using a virtual reality (VR) HMD setup.