LAUSR

Abstract Spatial Augmented reality (SAR) represents a key technology for the development of smart manufacturing as it is barrier free, does not require the use of Head Mounted Displays or any other wearable devices and it fits most of the industrial constraints. The paper presents a novel SAR-based system to support the manual work in future smart factories. It conveys technical instructions during assembly, provides alerts in case of risks for humans’ safety and finally identifies which postures can bring to muscoloscheletric problems if repeated. Experiments with 30 participants demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed SAR-based system as compared LED monitor-based system and the overall achieved usability. The results proved that SAR technology improves the operators’ performance with respect to a LED monitor-based system and that users well accept it. We found that SAR is more effective for difficult tasks than for simple ones.