Measuring the impacts of AR HMD on users’ situation awareness during wood frame assembly tasks

Advances in the development of Augmented Reality (AR) hardware and software allow for novel opportunities to positively influence the traditional construction industry. Recent research studied the feasibility of various AR devices for supporting construction assembly tasks, however, there is limited work examining the usability of AR head-mounted display (HMD) in relation to construction workers’ cognitive skills such as situation awareness. This study evaluated three information display types (paper blueprint, tag-along image and conformal model) during wood frame assembly of three different scales (small, medium, and large) to investigate how AR HMDs impact user’s situation awareness with respect to mental workload. Eighteen construction engineering students were recruited in a within-subjects experiment. The findings showed no significant difference in both the mental workload and the situation awareness for all three display types, suggesting that AR displays did not generate significant excessive mental burden or distractions on users in comparison to traditional paper-based information. Specifically comparing the AR displays, the results revealed that user’s mental workload was affected by field of view (FOV) restriction in AR HMD, whereas situation awareness wasn’t impacted.