Comparing Adopter, Tester, and Non-adopter of Collaborative Augmented Reality for Industrial Services

Collaborative augmented reality (CAR) is a remote collaboration technology that utilizes augmented reality (AR) to create a shared environment for distributed collaborators conducting physical tasks. CAR became commercially available a few years ago, and its industrial adoption was accelerated by the contact and travel restrictions imposed during the Covid-19 pandemic to provide industrial services. However, it seems that despite implementation, the technology is not fully embraced and used regularly. Therefore, the objective of this paper is to explore differences in the assessment of perceived benefits, opportunities, challenges, and barriers in implementing CAR among different adoption status groups (i.e., Adopters, Testers, and Non-adopters). To achieve this objective, we conducted a survey in the German capital equipment industry. With a sample size of 130 companies, our study is the first attempt to quantitatively explore CAR adoption in the capital equipment industry and it provides valuable insights into the reasons for potential hesitations in adopting CAR.