Exploring Annotations and Hand Tracking in Augmented Reality for Remote Collaboration

Abstract

Collaboration among remotely distributed professionals is often required in a maintenance context. Professionals need mechanisms with adaptive capabilities to enable knowledge transfer, since the necessary experience and expertise are usually spread among different professionals. To provide a shared understanding, Augmented Reality (AR) has been explored. In this paper, which is part of ongoing research using a human-centered design approach with partners from the industry sector, we describe a framework using annotations to improve the shared perceived realities of different professionals. The framework allows manually freezing the on-site professional context and sharing it with a remote expert to create annotations. Then, the on-site professional can visualize instructions through aligned and anchored annotations, using a see-through Head Mounted Display (HMD). In addition, annotations based on real-time video stream from a remote expert are also available. Hand tracking is used to manipulate the annotations, enabling the adjustment of their position and scale in the real-world according to the context, thus enriching the on-site professional experience and improving visualization of information while conducting maintenance procedures suggested by a remote expert.