Systematic Literature Review on Augmented Reality-Based Maintenance Applications in Manufacturing Centered on Operator Needs

Smart manufacturing supported by emerging Industry 4.0 technologies is a key driver to realize mass product customizations. Augmented reality (AR) has been commonly applied to facilitate manual operations with ambient intelligence by overlaying virtual information on physical scenes. In most modern factories, maintenance remains an indispensable process that is difficult or yet to be fully automated. Several studies have previously reviewed AR-based maintenance across all industrial sectors, whereas those specific to manufacturing did not necessarily involve maintenance. Hence, this paper presents a systematic literature review on AR-assisted maintenance in manufacturing with a focus on the operator’s needs. A generic process has been proposed to classify the maintenance operations examined in the past studies into four sequential steps and to analyze the classification results based on the geographical location, maintenance type, AR technical elements, and integrated external sensors. The findings thus derived are expected to provide design guidelines for implementing AR applications with practical values to aid manual maintenance in future smart manufacturing environments.