Augmented Reality (AR) can assist with physical tasks such as object assembly through the use of “situated instructions”. These instructions can be in the form of videos, pictures, text or guiding animations, where the most helpful media among these is highly dependent on both the user and the nature of the task. Our work supports the authoring of AR tutorials for assembly tasks with little overhead beyond simply performing the task itself. The presented system, AuthAR reduces the time and effort required to build interactive AR tutorials by automatically generating key components of the AR tutorial while the author is assembling the physical pieces. Further, the system guides authors through the process of adding videos, pictures, text and animations to the tutorial. This concurrent assembly and tutorial generation approach allows for authoring of portable tutorials that fit the preferences of different end users. Physical task guidance can be delivered via Augmented Reality (AR) since assembly often requires both hands and continuous attention to the task [19] . Additionally, assembly tutorials have instructions directly associated with physical objects, so AR can reduce the need for excessive context switching between the instructions and the physical structure by projecting those instructions into the environment. These benefits have been demonstrated in fields such as Facilities Management [19] , Maintenance [47] , and Internet of Things (IoT) device management [19, 46] . Additionally, prior work in AR assembly guidance has shown that these benefits can translate to carrying out assembly tasks [2, 17, 20, 39] . While significant previous work has looked at the benefits of following tutorials in AR, much less has looked at how to author these tutorials. Beyond the technical requirements of an authoring interface, an ideal tutorial may look different depending on the end user of the tutorial. This problem is exacerbated in AR as there are many different modalities in which tutorial content can be presented. While one person may appreciate guiding animations in AR, another may prefer static text and images, and yet another may prefer video tutorials from one or multiple perspectives. With AuthAR, we present a system for building tutorials for assembly tasks that can accommodate the needs of these different types of end users. AuthAR generates video, and pictorial representations semi-automatically while the tutorial author completes the task. Furthermore, AuthAR allows tutorial authors to create and refine a tutorial in situ, integrating content authoring into the process of completing the task. This approach adds little additional overhead and reduces the need for post-processing of the tutorial. This paper presents the AuthAR system for generating mixed media assembly tutorials. Informed by prior work on content/tutorial authoring, and tutorial playback and walkthrough, we build the system with an eye toward non-obtrusive content authoring and generation of important components for tutorial playback, summarized in a set of design guidelines. We validate the system's ability to create a tutorial by stepping through the process of creating a tutorial to build a laptop stand, automatically generating an XML representation of the tutorial. Initial observations suggest the tool will be valuable, and possible ways the system could be extended and refined in future iterations. Toward validating AuthAR, we discuss our initial observations in testing with tutorial authors, present an example application that parses and displays the generated tutorial for end users, and explain extensibility beyond the presented use case. In doing so, we consider improvements to AuthAR, and design considerations for other in situ AR content authoring tools. AuthAR enables tutorial authors to generate mixed media tutorials semi-automatically to guide end users through the assembly process. We automatically record expert demonstration where possible and allow for in situ editing for refinements and additions. We built AuthAR with several design guidelines in mind, validated with the authoring of a tutorial for assembling a laptop stand, and discuss the extensibility to assembly of other tasks by simply loading different virtual models into AuthAR. We see AuthAR enabling authoring of tutorials that could reach a widespread population with mixed media tutorials flexible to the preferences of each individual user.
We present a mixed media assembly tutorial authoring system that streamlines creation of videos, images, text and dynamic instructions in situ.
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