The Influence Of Augmented Reality On Task Process And Performance Of Object Assembly

Assembly has long been considered as one of the most critical,potential and even strategic fields for the application of the augmented reality technology.Up to now,the advantages of augmented reality assembly have been affirmed by many researches.When the assembly task itself is a complex task composed of a variety of different types of activities,most of previous studies used the overall task performance to evaluate the impact of augmented reality on the assembly task.Thus,it remains to be further explored which stage or process of assembly task is affected by augmented reality technology.This research is based on the assembly task model of Stork et al.,that divides the whole task into two subtasks: commissioning and joining.Each subtask includes two sequential stages which are "perception and response selection" and "action".It can help to explore the influence character of augmented reality assistance on operators at different stages of the assembly task and provides a basis for further analysis on the influence mechanism of augmented reality assistance on assembly tasks by using this model.This research consisted of three experiments.Experiment 1 explored the influence of augmented reality on the performance of the overall assembly task,commissioning subtask and joining subtask.Experiment 2 and experiment 3 explored the influence of augmented reality on the different stages of commissioning subtask and joining subtask with different degrees of difficulty.Results:(1)In the first experiment,it was found that augmented reality could shorten the completion time of the whole assembly task,the commissioning subtask and the joining subtask,also reduce the number of errors occurred in the above tasks,but did not reduce the cognitive load of the whole assembly task.(2)Experiment 2 found that augmented reality assistance can reduce the number of errors and the users' cognitive load in commissioning subtask.In the "perception and response selection" stage of commissioning subtask,augmented reality assistance can shorten the time of finding the target parts,and it is particularly significant for difficult tasks.In the "action" stage of commissioning subtask,augmented reality assistance can shorten the time of grabbing parts.(3)Experiment 3 found that augmented reality assistance can reduce the number of errors occurred in joining subtask,but did not reduce users' cognitive load.In the "perception and response selection" stage of joining subtask,augmented reality assistance can shorten the time of understanding assembly relations,and for difficult tasks,it is particularly helpful in this stage.In the "action" stage of joining subtask,augmented reality assistance cannot shorten the time of building parts.In real life,the planning,design,development,training and application of augmented reality assistance system for assembly require a lot of manpower and financial resources.This research provides new approach and more detailed train of thought for evaluating the augmented reality assistance system.The result of the research has an important significance for improving the success rate,reducing the cost and improving the effectiveness of these project.