A comprehensive survey of augmented reality assembly research

In the past two decades, augmented reality (AR) has received a growing amount of attention by researchers in the manufacturing technology community, because AR can be applied to address a wide range of problems throughout the assembly phase in the lifecycle of a product, e.g., planning, design, ergonomics assessment, operation guidance and training. However, to the best of authors' knowledge, there has not been any comprehensive review of AR-based assembly systems. This paper aims to provide a concise overview of the technical features, characteristics and broad range of applications of AR-based assembly systems published between 1990 and 2015. Among these selected articles, two thirds of them were published between 2005 and 2015, and they are considered as recent pertinent works which will be discussed in detail. In addition, the current limitation factors and future trends in the development will also be discussed.