FixIt: An Approach towards Assisting Workers in Diagnosing Machine Malfunctions

Augmented Reality (AR) is a newly emerging user interface paradigm that is currently under rapid development. AR is still in its infancy. Only very few cases exist, in which AR technology has come out of the laboratories and has been evaluated [2] or used [8] in real industrial settings. At the Technical University of Munich, we address some of such open questions annually in three-month laboratory classes for graduate students in their junior years. By posing the problems within industrial settings (e.g., by involving an industrial sponsor) we try to ensure a realistic setting within which AR solutions are considered. Students investigate the posed problem, suggest a solution and build a very rough, prototypical demonstrator that illustrates the key ideas. The result is a prototypical system, illustrating the key points of using AR in a specific problem context. At the same time, the system design process has also laid out (and partially addressed) both system building and very general system design issues, which will be led back onto research agenda of the university and picked up in due time.