Augmented Reality

Modern factories are heavily influenced by product technologies, processes, IT tools and by the behaviour of the markets. Therefore these factories have to change accordingly using new tools and technologies. As such, Augmented Reality (AR) is a new and promising technology to support different tasks within the factories. The large economic potential of the AR technology is verified through different applications and justifies the efforts for further hardware and software development.

The meaning of humans as a most important and most valuable production factor is today uncontested. Humans in production are characterised by flexibility, creativity and a high potential of problem solving. The worker must be supported with suitable information technology in order to fulfil tasks under turbulent conditions. A “just-in-time” delivery is nowadays sche-duled only for the material, not for the information. The objective is to support humans in production as efficiently as possible with relevant information, at the correct place, the correct time and in the appropriate quality. To use these new potentials, technologies such as Multimedia, Augmented Vision (AV) and Augmented Reality (AR) have been developed. In the following contribution, the potentials of these technologies are shown and applications will be presented.