Visual Assist with a Laser Pointer and Wearable Display for Remote Collaboration

The Wearable Active Camera/Laser-Pointer (WACL) is a body-worn tool equipped with a camera/laser head capable of pan/tilt control to assist field workers in remote collaboration. A remote expert can freely observe the real workplace and directly point at targets with a laser spot. In our previous studies, however, it was found that advanced visual assist such as line drawings on images can support remote collaboration more adequately than a laser spot if the instructor needs to explain in detail. In this paper we first compared two wearable displays, a Head-Mounted Display (HMD) and Chest-Worn Display (CWD), to explore which one is more suitable for providing workers wearing the WACL with the additional visual assist. Next we examined how effectively the laser spot of the WACL link the real world to the advanced visual assist on the HMD or CWD. Results show that the CWD is superior in preference to HMD and the combination of the laser spot and wearable display can enhance task performance and usability.