The building owner's manual assisted by augmented reality

The Building Use, Operation, and Maintenance Manual, also known as the Building Owner's Manual (BOM), is a document that provides all the information necessary to guide Brazilian homeowners maintain and preserve their buildings. However, such manuals are in most cases presented in the textual format with sparse technical terms and references and lack the necessary information as required by federal government standards. A potential remedy to this situation is to enhance the traditional building manual¿s format using augmented reality (AR) that promotes new forms of interaction between the user and the BOM. In a nutshell, AR enables the displaying of virtual (computer generated) graphics overlaid on views of the real environment. In turn, the Facility Management covers areas of buildings management, operation and maintenance, and integrates with this theme. This association of RA and the Owner's Manual can even transcend the view limits and promote an approximation to the built object itself (building and systems) increasing information. Thus, the objective of this research is to evaluate the incorporation of Augmented Reality features into the Owner's Manual in order to qualify its use. The methodology adopted in this work follows the Design Science Research (DSR) approach. This approach is used to simultaneously achieve two different purposes in a research project: producing scientific knowledge and helping organizations to solve real problems. In particular, the specific steps that were followed in this research include: survey of owners, builders, and BOMs; analyze and classify Brazilian BOMs, propose a new form of BOM enriched by AR; characterize the features of AR that can be applied to the Owner's Manual; develop proposals for incorporation of AR in the manual and proposals to incorporate the manual in the environment by AR; compare different display formats for AR (tablet and smartglasses) in order to user performance; identify the greater acceptance solution in maintenance and operation by building users. The contribution granted presents insertion models of augmented reality technology in the BOMs, qualifies the AR incorporation, through experiments with measurement method following the protocol NASA TLX, and indicates a structuring of efforts by the agents involved to optimize the manual for AR technology. In addition, it provides two artifacts in the form of applications (Living Augmented Reality and Manual Augmented Reality) exemplifying the technological potential and producing, in practice, the generation of scientific knowledge. In short, it was proved that the insertion of AR technology, regardless of the format acts favorably integrated with the BOMs, optimizing its orientation role and recommending the best use of the building. In addition, the agents involved in the construction process may act assertively in relation to the inherent aspects of operation and maintenance, through the manual assisted by AR.