A mixed reality for virtual assembly

Mixed reality (MR) is a hybrid reality where real and virtual objects are merged to produce an enriched interactive environment. Virtual Reality (VR) has been used in the simulation of production processes such as the product assembly and the execution of industrial tasks. Augmented reality (AR) has been widely used as an instructional tool to help the user to perform the task in real world conditions. Most of these works were focused on solving technical problems, specific to the type of application but they did not take advantage of the achievements realized in both VR and AR technologies. This paper presents a mixed reality system that integrates virtual assembly environment with augmented reality. This approach is mainly based on the development of a hybrid tacking system for the synchronization of the virtual and the real hand of the user. The evaluation of this Mixed Reality approach showed a statistically significant improvement of the user performance in the assembly task execution, compared to the task realized in virtual environment.