Hybrid remote expert - An emerging pattern of industrial remote support

Abstract

One of today's challenges in the Industrial domain is to support workers decision-making and comprehension of the situation by enhancing and extending workers vision. This paper examines a pattern of industrial needs and related solutions for technical support and information-based guidance. The information is provided to field technicians in order to repair and maintain equipment on site, using Augmented Reality (AR) applications running on smart glasses or tablets. The pattern suggests three main interconnected modes of consuming contextual technical information with Augmented Reality: (1) assisted by pre-recorded augmented information, (2) guided by a remote human expert, or (3) supported by an autonomous cognitive system. The pattern, emerged by harvesting our field experience and a literature review, is termed as a hybrid remote expert; in the paper, we describe how it is observed in the industry and discuss the business uses.