Context-aware Maintenance Support for Augmented Reality Assistance and Synchronous Multi-user Collaboration

Maintenance processes are generally subdivided into tasks with specified goals for the concerned practitioners. Collaboration is achieved through coordination, cooperation and communication. Smart devices and the Internet of Things (IoT) improve communication between men and machine alike, so the potential gain on cooperation and coordination in an IoT-enabled environment is examined. In this approach a concept for a framework is proposed to create Augmented Reality based collaboration assistant systems. AR is not only a tool for the visualization of maintenance data, but also for team-wide communication and the display of warnings or other coordination-related indications. The framework is validated with the presented use case in a laboratory environment.