Augmented Reality Devices: Analyzing and Comparing Effectiveness Outdoors

Investigators

Currently, most of the AR activities in the construction industry are performed using headsets like the Microsoft’s HoloLens. The researchers hypothesized that the use of AR would be more widespread if the user could experience it through a more familiar piece of hardware like a mobile phone or tablet. As an initial step toward developing this hypothesis, researchers had to determine if the AR experience was effective on the mobile devices.

Researchers set up an experiment at the field lab where building science students were tasked with performing a pre-pour inspection on plumbing penetrations. The precision and speed of the inspections was measured for each student and the type of hardware used (HoloLens, iPad, iPhone) was included with the data set.

The mobile devices performed admirably as compared to the traditional headsets. The mobile devices were superior in brightness and ease of use, but were inferior in terms of precision and stability. The mobile devices were effective for performing simple construction inspection activities but further experimentation is necessary to discover their ability to handle more complex data sets and environments.