Augmented Reality Remote Maintenance in Industry: A Systematic Literature Review

Augmented reality (AR) is a promising technology for supporting industrial maintenance applications. Two major types of AR technology are used for maintenance applications. One of those is AR remote maintenance, a technology that connects remote experts to on-site technicians to work collaboratively on industrial maintenance applications. This seems especially valuable for nonstandardized tasks. Although several recent systematic literature reviews (SLRs) on AR for maintenance applications have been published, the growing body of literature calls for an ever-differentiated view of the knowledge base of AR remote maintenance. Therefore, this paper aims to map AR remote maintenance literature by conducting an SLR, characterizing the literature, describing applications in industry, and making suggestions for further research. Based on the analysis of 89 articles from the last two decades, this paper contributes the following findings: 1) the research field has a strong engineering focus on system development. 2) scholars share a common understanding of AR remote maintenance, despite using heterogeneous terminology; 3) the prevailing study design only allows for limited comparison of prototypes and applications; 4) transferability to industrial maintenance professionals is limited, due to the study design; 5) AR remote maintenance appears to raise business model opportunities for product-service systems; and 6) the diversity of AR remote maintenance applications indicates the technology’s industrial versatility. Overall, the maturity of the research field is increasing; however, it is still at an early stage. Based on these findings, we made two proposals for advancing the AR remote maintenance research field.