A Study on Skill Transfer Using Augmented Reality

Effective methods of skill transfer are required at the manufacturing site of heavy industry with high-mix, low-volume manufacturing. Several previous studies have shown that giving unskilled worker simultaneous experiences in the skilled worker’s visual sense from a first-person perspective and force sense is effective for the skill transfer. This paper proposes a method of skill transfer by creating holographic moving images of workpieces and tools from the skilled worker’s motion. In order to analyze the effectiveness of this method, a control experiment by the assembly work of Tetris Block was carried out as a preliminary experiment. By using the proposed method and movie instruction which has already been put to practical use, each experimental participant’s assembly work was observed and compared, and the difference of two methods was analyzed from the three viewpoints of the work procedure, work time, and body motion. As a result, the effectiveness of the proposed method was confirmed from three perspectives; the margins of the body motion can be provided by the movement of holograms, the movement of holograms can communicate the skilled worker’s detailed motion information, and the skill transfer is possible in the virtual space environment which is not affected by real space. The future task is to verify the findings of this study by applying proposed method to actual field works.