Towards Asynchronous Mixed Reality Remote Guidance supported by a Virtual Assistant: Proposal of a Conceptual Model

Activities of remote guidance are essential in the Industry sector to overcome emerging problems. One important technology to create a common ground between distributed team-members is Mixed Reality (MR). On-site collaborators can receive instructions from remote experts, informing where to act, and what to do. Nevertheless, most studies have focused on synchronous use-cases, where team-members can interact in real-time. Hence, an opportunity exists to explore asynchronous scenarios, in which collaborative actions take place at different times. This position paper proposes a vision for combining MR and a Virtual Assistant (VA) for supporting asynchronous remote guidance in Industrial Scenarios. This combination can be highly flexible in supporting most simpler tasks, taking advantage of existing instructions from previous sessions. Also important, a VA can be constantly available, reducing time-to-response, while supporting various individuals with distinct needs. These and other arguments in favor of this position are presented and future directions are proposed.