Systematics for the individual assessment of Augmented Reality potentials to support product validation

By integrating multiple disciplines like mechatronics, electronics and software, products become ever complex. The number of product variants increases while the product life cycles are getting shorter. At the same time, individualization and customer orientation are intensified. Often products are specifically designed and produced for customers according to their individual needs and requirements. For multidisciplinary products, a broad spectrum of product features can be of importance to customers in this context. To be successful in the highly competitive markets, companies need to further reduce their development times while fulfilling the individual customer requirements. This demands a continuous and efficient validation during the development. But classic validation approaches like physical prototypes or digital simulations are either not cost- and time-efficient or do not support a subjective validation by the customer. Additionally, an increasing geographical separation and flexible working hours hamper the necessary collaboration of the developers and customers. The existing challenges can be addressed through the innovative visualization and communication technology Augmented Reality (AR). AR provides enormous potentials to support product validation. Products or product features can be validated with AR even across locations based on virtual prototypes. However, the basic complexity of AR in combination with a lack of technology expertise and experience prevents companies from identifying and exploiting the potentials. This work therefore presents a systematic approach for the individual assessment of AR potentials to support product validation. Based on individual requirements, the systematics empowers companies to analyze the potentials on their own and plan AR-based validation accordingly. Thus, the presented work enables the utilization of so far largely unexploited innovative technological potentials.