Interoperability Between AR and CAD Systems for Industrial Applications

Augmented Reality (AR) has been widespread over the years in different areas, especially in the manufacturing field, to facilitate the digitization of production processes, and increase productivity and product quality. While AR has grown in popularity, significant barriers exist to its adoption in industry, including high development costs and ineffective interoperability, which limit high flexibility and rapid adaptability required for competitive production systems. Therefore, handling interoperability properly is a key issue in this scenario, especially between AR technology and existing IT systems, widely adopted throughout the product lifecycle. Many of those challenges are related to the compatibility of data representation across these different systems, resulting in data loss or sharing of unusable information. Based on these considerations, this paper first analyzes the main issues related to the interoperability between AR and CAD systems, including data exchange, AR content authoring, and virtual data specifications. To bridge the gap between AR and CAD interoperability, a CAD automation tool is then presented that can support unskilled operators in preparing AR content for industrial applications. Preliminary experimentation is carried out to evaluate the main potentialities due to its adoption, which provides the basis for further implementation and investigation in a real industrial setting.