Contextualizing benefits and limitations reported for augmented reality in construction research

Augmented Reality (AR) has been in use for years, and is increasingly being adopted in the construction industry. Research has explored various applications of AR in construction to identify its benefits and drawbacks. To synthesize these findings, prior works have conducted literature reviews about AR in construction, but these papers generally focus on identifying attributes for which there is consensus about AR benefits or drawbacks. While this is important, it highlights the need to identify trends in AR literature for which there is divergence in reporting to better understand the underlying contextual factors that may impact the success of AR implementation. This paper investigates trends in AR literature by studying both benefits and limitations reported when using current generation AR devices for construction applications. This is done by reviewing 49 articles from 2013 to 2020 found through a key word search for “augmented reality”, “mixed reality” and “construction”. The papers are categorized according to the most common attributes reported. The benefits and limitations identified are analysed based on how the technology was used. For several AR attributes, including ease of implementation, learning/training time, field of view, hardware and software performance, occlusion and immersiveness, there was consensus in reporting among researchers. For other AR attributes, including cost, cognitive performance, development time, tracking and registration, attitude towards the technology, and efficiency, there was divergence in reports among researchers. For each of these divergent attributes, the authors provide a discussion related to the contextual factors that were present. Beyond illustrating that some attributes do not lead to agreement between researchers, the results also indicate contextual factors that may contribute to the difference in reports. These findings contribute to the literature by enabling researchers to include or exclude contextual factors to gain or mitigate previously reported benefits or challenges when using AR in construction.