Open Access

Eva Lampen, Jannes Lehwald, Thies Pfeiffer

• Embedding virtual humans in educational settings enables the transfer of the approved concepts of learning by observation and imitation of experts to extended reality scenarios. Whilst various presentation concepts of virtual humans for learning have been investigated in sports and rehabilitation, little is known regarding industrial use cases. In prior work on manual assembly, Lampen et al. [21] show that three-dimensional (3D) registered virtual humans can provide assistance as effective as state-of-the-art HMD-based AR approaches. We extend this work by conducting a comparative user study (N=30) to verify implementation costs of assistive behavior features and 3D registration. The results reveal that the basic concept of a 3D registered virtual human is limited and comparable to a two-dimensional screen aligned presentation. However, by incorporating additional assistive behaviors, the 3D assistance concept is enhanced and shows significant advantages in terms of cognitive savings and reduced errors. Thus, it can be concluded, that this presentation concept is valuable in situations where time is less crucial, e.g. in learning scenarios or during complex tasks.