Towards a Wearable Augmented Reality Visor for High-Precision Manual Tasks

Augmented Reality (AR) systems based on head-mounted displays intrinsically provide the user with an egocentric and natural viewpoint, and for this reason they are deemed as the most efficient solution for those tasks manually performed under user’s direct vision. They are commonly classified according to the AR paradigm implemented: Video See-Through (VST) and Optical See-Through (OST). A current research goal for these systems is to determine either of which of the two modalities is to be considered the best solution for the guidance of high-precision manual tasks. To answer this question, in this paper we report the outcomes of two user studies performed by our research team that involved a commercially available OST (Microsoft HoloLens) and a customized new-concept VST head-mounted display. The average error in tracing a line under AR aid is considerably inferior in VST user study than the one performed with OST device (1 mm and 5.8 mm, respectively). However, some of the advantages offered by OST device are not negligible, thus a hybrid solution implementing the two paradigms can overcome the limitations of both technologies.