A knowledge-based augmented reality tool for managing design variations

In view of the wide scope of challenges concerning Industry 4.0, a variety of enabling digital industrial technologies can support the digitization of the manufacturing sector. Among them, Augmented Reality represents one of the most promising innovation accelerators that will support human workers and bring Smart Factories to a higher level of efficiency. To this end, the paper presents an Augmented Reality tool that provides support at the workplace to easily detect and collect design changes by augmenting virtual 3D models, as defined in the project plan, on the actual design. The proposed tool runs on a consumer smartphone and adopts hybrid tracking techniques to allow workers to formalize and make more efficient the knowledge management of the design changes within the overall design process.