Open Access

Klajdo Fyraj, Peter Firsching

• The user interface of automation systems can sometimes be ambiguous and difficult to correlate with the right components of the system located in the real environment. In addition, inexperienced personnel is required to go through large documentation reports, to call an expert on site or even to require training in order to solve an issue. As such, this could be costly and inefficient for small and medium sized enterprises (SME). Here we show that an augmented reality (AR) based user interface can ease the interaction of a user/worker with a machine. In addition, by projecting virtual information on an image stream from a camera, the interaction between them can become more intuitive. Furthermore, we compare two kinds of devices which can be used with augmented reality – a head-mounted device and a hand-held device. Our results demonstrate that the user is able to understand faster the current system and interact with it without requiring any professional experience. Finally, we expect to expand our application to interact with more complex and large systems and enhanced features in respect with the user interface.