Interactive projections have been around for more than a decade. We measured their potentials for augmented workplaces in production. For this purpose we built the prototype of an assistive system projecting instructions directly into the workspace (in situ). While it can be applied in every production environment, the system was first implemented and tested where it is needed the most: in a sheltered work organization employing persons with impairments.It could be shown that the assembly times could be slightly reduced by the augmented system. However it had a "catalytic" effect on the test subjects' work quality: While some seem to be overwhelmed by the new information density and perform worse, others perform much better than the control group and significantly reduce error rates. The qualitative results show that although impaired persons retain a critical perspective on systems directly changing the way they have been working for years, all users would like to retry working with the system. When looking at additional aids like the projection of a real-sized model in the workspace, the users invariantly accept its benefits for their assembly work.

Production work requires a high level of awareness and especially manual assembly work is prone to human errors. At the same time the demand for manual assembly grows. Assistive systems in production environments (ASiPE) have to be augmented to improve the overall performance and reduce skill requirements.In this study the prototype of an augmented ASiPE is applied in an experiment with impaired persons. It uses in-situ projection (i.e. the projection of work-relevant information directly into the working space, Figures 1, 8) to cognitively assist users in assembly and to improve their inclusion in regular work processes. The aim is to observe their behavior with this new form of human computer interaction and to empirically quantify the effects on performance both in time and quality.The results show that the augmentation has a catalytic effect: The test subjects assembling slowly could not cope with the augmented ASiPE and performed worse than their counterparts without augmentation. The test subjects who worked faster than average assembled the product significantly better, both with respect to time (14.5% reduction) and especially to quality (45.8% error reduction). The ability to access the potential of augmented workplaces seems to be related to a worker' cognitive potential which is not adequately mapped by the competence ratios sheltered work organizations currently use. Figure 1. The in-situ projection of assembly instructions and a one-to-one model of the correct result of the current assembly step provide cognitive support for the users.

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Context-aware assistive systems (CAAS) have become ubiquitous in cars or smartphones but not in industrial work contexts: while there are systems controlling work results, context-specific assistance during the processes is hardly offered. As a result production workers still have to rely on their skills and expertise. While un-impaired workers may cope well with this situation, elderly or impaired persons in production environments need context-sensitive assistance.The contribution of the research presented here is three-fold:(1) We provide a framework for context-aware assistive systems in production environments. These systems are based on motion recognition and use projection and elements from game design (gamification) to augment work. (2) Based on this framework we describe a prototype with respect to both the physical and the software implementation.(3) We present the results of a study with impaired workers and quantifying the effects of the augmentations on work speed and quality.

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