AnnHoloTator: A Mixed Reality Collaborative Platform for Manufacturing Work Instruction Interaction

Admittedly, eXtend Reality (XR) technologies may play a key role in the digital transformation sparked by the Industry 4.0 initiative. Within the virtuality continuum, Augmented and Mixed Reality (AR, MR) emerge as disruptive technologies as they can improve industrial processes while maximizing worker efficiency and mobility by providing virtual elements in real-world scenarios where and when necessary. In particular, such technologies can foster the adoption of Lean Manufacturing (LM) paradigms supporting on-site assembly processes to improve productivity. We here describe how such an approach has been implemented in a real use case, with the development of AnnHoloTator, a collaborative mixed-reality platform for Microsoft Hololens 2 that allows users to visualize and manipulate digital documents directly in AR. Unlike existing systems, AnnHoloTator lets its users explore and modify the content of the digital documents stored in the cloud by interacting with their holograms. The system provides a data-flexible approach, considering that documents reside on a remote server, where also the majority of computation is performed. This provides an advantage: on-site professionals can directly annotate a virtual document and share it with other workers.