Comparison among types of assembly manuals based on paper, video and augmented reality

Abstract

Nowadays Augmented Reality (AR) has been utilized in many areas, including assembly tasks. This study was designed to compare and evaluate the performance, perceived usability and user acceptance between the AR-based manual and the other types of manuals, such as the paper-based and the video-based manuals. 30 participants took part in the experiment, and were asked to complete a simple assembly task of LEGO model. Each participant conducted a total of three experiments using one of three types of manuals for the task. Error and completion time during the assembly tasks were measured as the objective performance and at the end of each experiment, the participants were asked to evaluate the perceived usability and the user acceptance. From the statistical analyses, it is concluded that the attitude to use the AR-based manual is relatively positive, even though working through the AR-based manual shows disadvantages, such as the longest completion time, more errors than the other manuals and the high burden of learning. Thus it would be more likely to use the AR-based manual in the near future, although there are now more obstacles to use the AR-based manual than the other types of manuals. © 2020 ISSN 1881-803X.