Immersive assistive technologies for knowledge transfer of crafts: Exploration and technical challenges

Abstract

Immersive technologies have created a paradigm shift in the realm of traditional crafts, offering unprecedented avenues for digitization and knowledge transfer. This scoping review explores the integration of immersive technologies within the traditional crafts domain, focusing on their utilization for digitization and their impact on knowledge transfer processes. Through a systematic analysis of available literature, this review aims to map the existing landscape of immersive technology applications in traditional craftsmanship, dissecting the modalities and influence on knowledge transfer. Emphasizing the use of virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), and mixed reality (MR), this study endeavours to identify trends, gaps, and prospects for leveraging immersive technologies in the preservation, transmission, and enhancement of traditional craft knowledge. As set of results will be presented, namely a positioning map of existing solutions within immersive technology and their activeness in assistance. An overview of topics occurrences, visualized in a Venn diagram. An identification of the perspectives throughout the literature articles, a used methods overview and lastly a set of fundamental elements providing a set of tendencies to include when dealing with knowledge transfer of immersive technologies in crafts. It becomes clear from literature that existing studies focus rather on very specific test setups due to the unique nature of each craft or craft process. This leaves opportunity for generalization and creation of a structured repository. There is a trend towards usage of virtual avatars in studies that make use of immersive virtual elements in their experiment setups. There is a clear motive across the literature to combine the flexibility of the virtual with the familiarity of physical work environments. Therefore, mixed reality could form a possible solution, combining virtual and real-world components.

Keywords: craftsmanship, virtual reality, scoping review, knowledge transfer

DOI: 10.54941/ahfe1005325