Abstract:

The COVID-19 pandemic has created entirely new challenges for schools, universities, and the business world. Until now, technical support is provided by physical presence workgroups at the workplace or educational institution. However, due to the pandemic, these are now barely staffed. The current challenge has led to a dramatic increase in utilizing digital tools both at work and for education purposes. With the introduction of video conferencing software, such as Microsoft Teams, Cisco WebEx, or Zoom, most organizations try to compensate for their employees' physical absence.

However, it is also evident that employees' physical contact cannot be replaced permanently by videotelephony alone. Especially manual work instructions are difficult to handle via web conferencing. For example, lessons about constructing an electronic circuit cannot be presented solely via videotelephony. The instructor needs to demonstrate precisely how each cable is connected to which port. Applying verbal descriptions only may result in many mistakes.

This paper investigates whether augmented reality (AR) contributes to improving the transmission of manual work instructions to trainees. We focus on transmitting instructions directly to technical staff members. Thus, we investigate whether augmented reality can provide more accurate and faster descriptions of work instructions in the technological environment. We pay special attention to the so-called "hands-free working." Thus, our instructions are provided to trainees via smart glasses. For this purpose, we examine two groups of participants. Both groups were asked to solve a manual task under guidance. The first group receives instructions via video conferencing software without displaying further instructions via digital annotations. The second group uses a video conferencing system to annotate items and receive comprehensive information from the instructor directly on the smart glasses displays.

Our investigation demonstrates that the study group that received instructions via smart glasses supported by digital annotations made significantly fewer errors than the study group that received instruction purely via video streaming. As a result of our studies, we provide recommendations for future remote education for technicians and engineers.

Keywords:

Augmented reality, smart glasses, remote training, hands free working, video conferencing.