Virtual Mirror for Maintenance: An Augmented Reality Support Tool

This work aims to propose a virtual mirror as a tool for an Augmented Reality (AR) interface in support of operators who perform maintenance tasks, especially in blind areas with component occlusion. In the literature, it is still not clear what is the best AR solution to help workers perform maintenance tasks with occluded components. Thus, we designed an AR interface with a virtual mirror that can assist workers in identifying occluded components thanks to an additional workspace viewpoint. While physical mirrors are commonly employed in maintenance tasks to address blind spots, virtual mirrors are not yet widely adopted. Therefore, our study intends to design and evaluate a virtual mirror that simulates workers’ behavior using a real one in maintenance tasks. We planned a user study to compare the real and virtual mirrors in a real maintenance context. We conducted a performance evaluation with 20 users. Findings indicated no statistically significant differences between the virtual and physical mirrors regarding completion time, accuracy, and cognitive load. Our solution makes it possible to replace a real mirror providing the same user performance but with the advantage of being able to place it without space limitations and observe additional information exploiting AR.