The use of Augmented Reality (AR) to support assembly tasks has been an area of interest from its origins in the 90s. Since then, the benefits that this technology could bring to assembly-related tasks have been shown. And, although several advances have been done in different areas such as software, hardware, and human interaction, there are still some problems that have not allowed AR to expand and reach its full potential. Thereby, authors propose a real-time vibrotactile guidance method based on the Gestalt continuity principle and developed a Haptic Augmented Reality application with a low-cost configuration to evaluate the support of the proposed method in assembly tasks. Thus, it potentially overcomes the existing visual issues of AR allowing the user to focus on the task and avoid over-reliance into the technology. The proposed system recognizes the different parts and sub-assemblies, generates the instructions to perform the assembly based on the target position and rotation of each part and verifies the assembly. Additionally, a test was conducted to guide the user in positioning a part, obtaining a high accuracy of rotation and location placement. Also, different functions of the application were tested and the results are suitable for supporting the user guidance.

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The need for more flexible tools and reduction of time and cost has led to the implementation of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) techniques in the product design and development process. Those techniques have already been used in the conceptual, manufacturing and assembly stages of product design instead of or in extension of the physical prototypes. Such virtual applications have demonstrated superior performance in assembly process design and evaluation of activities that present information about different assembly states in real time, thanks to their flexibility in manipulating and creating new working scenarios. Here, the development of an AR application, called PoliART, aimed at the visual evaluation of assembly sequences at early stages of design is presented. At an industrial level this allows collaborative work between designers and manufacturing engineers from the very beginning in order to consider assembly devices, times and resources, with a short implementation time and reduced costs

In most of the surrounding discrete products, style plays a very important role. Specifically, color has a great impact in the visual perception, and its meaning can vary depending on the context where the product is located. Anyway, there are not dedicated applications devoted to support designers during this activity of color selection in the conceptual stage of the product design process. In this way, this paper presents the development and evaluation of a software platform that allows the user to choose a scheme of colors of a product concept using a Natural User Interface (NUI) in a 3D scanned context. In addition, the NUI was validated and evaluated with a case study oriented to compare the scheme of colors, for a conceptual product, selected by product designers, an expert panel and the target user in order to prove that this interface can enhance the process of color selection during the concept stage of the product design process, with regards to a traditional selection process with images and user profile.