XR Interfaces for Remote Welding

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The recent pandemic and associated hybrid work culture reignites the importance of extended reality (XR) technologies for remote collaboration across the world. As different ranges of automation are introduced in the
industry with an increasing focus on digitalization, safety, and productivity, it is important to understand the context and physiological metrics of existing human operators. This paper describes the implementation of a virtual (VR) and mixed reality (MR) interface of a welding process and compares operators’ performance between VR and MR. Initially, MR and VR were compared with respect to a 3D equivalent of the ISO pointing task followed by a welding task involving trajectory definition and actual robotic arm movement. A plethora of parameters involving ocular data, EEG, hand movement, subjective opinion and quantitative measures were recorded and analyzed. The analysis of physiological parameters such as EEG based Task Load Index, Task Engagement Index, and ocular parameters such as fixation rate and average fixation duration indicated that the interaction in the synthetic VR environment involved higher engagement, lower mental processing load and distinct visual processing mechanisms in the optical cortex compared to the MR interaction. Similar comparison trends observed in these parameters across both tasks confirmed the reproducibility of the experiment methodology and results. Results from the study can be used in terms of selecting rendering media for other immersive applications in domains such as manufacturing, robotics, healthcare, and education. The results were used to develop a multi-modal VR interface with a novel collision-based weld path definition method suitable for industrial deployment.