Mapping the Emergent Trends in Industrial Augmented Reality

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

For some references, there are generally notes (describe more in one or 2 sentences)

Author Response

Point 1: For some references, there are generally notes (describe more in one or 2 sentences).

Response 1: Thank you for pointing out this issue, we have tried to improve the article and have included new phrases that bring clarification and consistency to the work.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Their methodology is clearly described, including the search query used to retrieve the relevant documents from Scopus and Clarivate Web of Science, and the use of ScientoPy scientometric tool to preprocess the data set and extract the top authors' keywords. The identified top ten trending topics are presented with their respective ScientoPy trend indices and discussed with references to the articles with the highest number of citations and most relevant to the topic.

 

However, one potential limitation of this study is the lack of clarity regarding the scope and intention of the research. While the authors have provided a detailed methodology and analysis of the identified trends, it is unclear what their specific research question or objective was. Nevertheless, their study provides valuable insights into the current state of research on the use of augmented and mixed reality in industrial applications and highlights the most prominent topics and trends in this field.

Even so, the article simply enumerates the findings of other studies. It does not add value. 

the authors did not provide information on the number of articles included in their review. This information is important for readers to understand the scope of the study and to assess the comprehensiveness of the literature review. Without this information, it is difficult to determine the representativeness of the articles used in the study and assess the validity of the author's conclusions.

exclusion criteria? 

 

Author Response

Their methodology is clearly described, including the search query used to retrieve the relevant documents from Scopus and Clarivate Web of Science, and the use of ScientoPy scientometric tool to preprocess the data set and extract the top authors' keywords. The identified top ten trending topics are presented with their respective ScientoPy trend indices and discussed with references to the articles with the highest number of citations and most relevant to the topic.

Point 1: However, one potential limitation of this study is the lack of clarity regarding the scope and intention of the research. While the authors have provided a detailed methodology and analysis of the identified trends, it is unclear what their specific research question or objective was. Nevertheless, their study provides valuable insights into the current state of research on the use of augmented and mixed reality in industrial applications and highlights the most prominent topics and trends in this field.

Response 1: Thank you for your suggestion, we have added the following clarification starting from line 54:

“This study aims to gain valuable insights concerning the current state of research regarding augmented and mixed reality use in industrial applications whilst revealing the most prominent topics and trends in this field. The relevant literature of the last five years was reviewed in order to investigate the following research questions:

Q1. What are the most common research topics in IAR?

Q2. What are the trends in using AR for industrial applications?

Q3. What are the main research results?

“

Point 2: Even so, the article simply enumerates the findings of other studies. It does not add value.

Response 2:  Thank you for your observation. As we’ve pointed out previously, our study aimed to reveal the most prominent topics and trends concerning the current state of research regarding the use of augmented and mixed reality in industrial applications. Besides, several advantages and/or limitations have been presented, which we believe adds value to the research. Nonetheless, we have added a “Discussion” section in which we summarise some key points of our bibliometric review (lines 733-754):

“Augmented and mixed reality technologies are slowly but steadily gaining traction in our society. The development of immersive experiences that seamlessly merge the real and virtual worlds has several advantages, such as increased worker productivity, enhanced education and training sessions, and reduced risk of accidents or errors on the job. The industry sector can fully benefit from the progress of modern technologies, such as IoT, AI, and digital twins. One major challenge is how these advanced tools can be combined in order to overcome each other’s limitations. So far, the most common approaches have included a combination of IoT with AI and an AR/VR/XR-based user interface. Deep learning algorithms that collect real-time data from a factory are the stepping stone for predictive maintenance and the development of digital twins. Moreover, DTs rely on the synergy between most of the topics presented in this study and represent a leap forward for the industry sector. However, their rapid adoption is hindered by many limitations, such as computing power, the convergence of the physical and digital world, security issues, and so on.

Current XR devices represent a significant limitation because of their high price, limited field of view, reduced battery autonomy, and weak computing performance, especially in the case of untethered headsets. However, major tech companies are investing heavily in AR/XR technology, and there are ongoing efforts to optimize production and lower the price of producing AR/XR headsets. We may anticipate more cutting-edge and valuable applications for AR/XR glasses as the technology develops, which may boost consumer demand and make them more widely available.”

Point 3: The authors did not provide information on the number of articles included in their review. This information is important for readers to understand the scope of the study and to assess the comprehensiveness of the literature review. Without this information, it is difficult to determine the representativeness of the articles used in the study and assess the validity of the author's conclusions.

 Response 3: Thank you for pointing out this issue, we have mentioned in the Conclusions how many papers were found for each category, Also, in Section 2, we highlighted that the articles with the highest number of citations were analysed.

Point 4: Exclusion criteria?

Response 4:  We appreciate this important suggestion. We have added the following paragraph related to exclusion criteria (lines 103-110):

 “The identified top ten trending topics are discussed with references to the articles with the highest number of citations and most relevant to the topic. The following exclu-sion criteria were used in the process of article selection:

1. publication type: books, book chapters, notes and editorials were excluded;
2. publication date: publications outside the 2018-2022 timeframe were excluded;
3. duplicate publications: duplicate publications are excluded to avoid dou-ble-counting;
4. irrelevant topics: articles that are not relevant to the research question or objectives were excluded.”

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Overall, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging trends in Industrial Augmented Reality (IAR) over the past five years. The use of a comprehensive literature review analysis of industrial works from two scientific databases is commendable, as it provides a thorough and well-supported exploration of the topic. The identification of ten trending topics of AR application in the industrial sector is a valuable contribution to the field, and the detailed discussion of each topic in the article sections provides a clear insight into the existing applications and research trends for each application field.

 

However, it would be beneficial if the paper could provide more specific examples of each trend and its impact on the industrial sector. Additionally, the paper could benefit from a more critical analysis of the limitations and challenges facing the implementation of AR in the industrial sector.

Clearly define all system parameters: It is important to clearly define all system parameters used in the study to ensure that the results are reproducible and meaningful. Provide detailed descriptions of each parameter, including its units of measurement and any assumptions made.

Justify the selection of system parameters: Explain why each parameter was chosen and why it is relevant to the study. Provide a rationale for any assumptions made and include a discussion of any limitations or uncertainties associated with the parameters. Discuss the range of parameter values: Provide a discussion of the range of parameter values used in the study, including the minimum, maximum, and typical values. Discuss how the range of values was chosen and how it relates to real-world scenarios.

Conduct sensitivity analyses: Perform sensitivity analyses to determine how sensitive the results are to changes in the values of the parameters. This will provide insight into the robustness of the results and help identify critical parameters that may need to be better constrained in future studies.

 

Compare parameter values to existing literature: Compare the values of the parameters used in the study to those reported in existing literature. Discuss any discrepancies and explain why the values used in the study are appropriate.

 

Present results in a clear and organized manner: Ensure that the results are presented in a clear and organized manner, including tables and figures to aid in visualization. Discuss the implications of the results and how they relate to the original research questions or hypotheses.

 

Overall, this paper is informative and well-structured, providing a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners interested in the application of AR in the industrial sector.

 

Author Response

Overall, this paper provides a comprehensive overview of the emerging trends in Industrial Augmented Reality (IAR) over the past five years. The use of a comprehensive literature review analysis of industrial works from two scientific databases is commendable, as it provides a thorough and well-supported exploration of the topic. The identification of ten trending topics of AR application in the industrial sector is a valuable contribution to the field, and the detailed discussion of each topic in the article sections provides a clear insight into the existing applications and research trends for each application field.

Point 1: However, it would be beneficial if the paper could provide more specific examples of each trend and its impact on the industrial sector. Additionally, the paper could benefit from a more critical analysis of the limitations and challenges facing the implementation of AR in the industrial sector.

Response 1: Thank you for your suggestion, we have mentioned that the identified top ten trending topics are discussed with references to the articles with the highest number of citations and most relevant to the topic. Also, we have added a “Discussion” section in which we summarise some key points of our bibliometric review (lines 731-752):

“Augmented and mixed reality technologies are slowly but steadily gaining traction in our society. The development of immersive experiences that seamlessly merge the real and virtual worlds has several advantages, such as increased worker productivity, enhanced education and training sessions, and reduced risk of accidents or errors on the job. The industry sector can fully benefit from the progress of modern technologies, such as IoT, AI, and digital twins. One major challenge is how these advanced tools can be combined in order to overcome each other’s limitations. So far, the most common approaches have included a combination of IoT with AI and an AR/VR/XR-based user interface. Deep learning algorithms that collect real-time data from a factory are the stepping stone for predictive maintenance and the development of digital twins. Moreover, DTs rely on the synergy between most of the topics presented in this study and represent a leap forward for the industry sector. However, their rapid adoption is hindered by many limitations, such as computing power, the convergence of the physical and digital world, security issues, and so on.

Current XR devices represent a significant limitation because of their high price, limited field of view, reduced battery autonomy, and weak computing performance, especially in the case of untethered headsets. However, major tech companies are investing heavily in AR/XR technology, and there are ongoing efforts to optimize production and lower the price of producing AR/XR headsets. We may anticipate more cutting-edge and valuable applications for AR/XR glasses as the technology develops, which may boost consumer demand and make them more widely available.”

Point 2: Clearly define all system parameters: It is important to clearly define all system parameters used in the study to ensure that the results are reproducible and meaningful. Provide detailed descriptions of each parameter, including its units of measurement and any assumptions made.

Justify the selection of system parameters: Explain why each parameter was chosen and why it is relevant to the study. Provide a rationale for any assumptions made and include a discussion of any limitations or uncertainties associated with the parameters. Discuss the range of parameter values: Provide a discussion of the range of parameter values used in the study, including the minimum, maximum, and typical values. Discuss how the range of values was chosen and how it relates to real-world scenarios.

Response 2:  We appreciate this suggestion.  We have added the following clarification (lines 86-94):

“The following ScientoPy trend indices for the identified top ten topics are given [14]:

• Average growth rate (AGR) - the average difference between the number of papers published in one year and the number of papers published the year before;
• Average documents per year (ADY) - the average number of papers published inside a time frame for the selected topic;
• Percentage of documents in last years (PDLY) - the ratio between the ADY and the total number of papers for a certain topic;
• h-index of each topic - ScientoPy determines the h-index of each topic for different categories, like authors, countries, institutions, etc.”

Point 3: Conduct sensitivity analyses: Perform sensitivity analyses to determine how sensitive the results are to changes in the values of the parameters. This will provide insight into the robustness of the results and help identify critical parameters that may need to be better constrained in future studies.

Response 3:  Thank you for your suggestion to perform sensitivity analyses on our results. However, due to the nature of our study, it is not possible to conduct sensitivity analyses as the parameters used were already well constrained.

Point 4: Compare parameter values to existing literature: Compare the values of the parameters used in the study to those reported in existing literature. Discuss any discrepancies and explain why the values used in the study are appropriate.

Response 4:  We appreciate this suggestion. From the authors knowledge, there are no related studies in the existing literature that report the values of the ScientoPy parameters used in this study for identifications of IAR trends. Therefore, we cannot compare the parameters used in this study to those reported in previous research and discuss any discrepancies.

Point 5: Present results in a clear and organized manner: Ensure that the results are presented in a clear and organized manner, including tables and figures to aid in visualization. Discuss the implications of the results and how they relate to the original research questions or hypotheses.

Response 5:  Thank you for helping us to improve the paper. We added the Figure 2 to aid in visualization of the IAR trends.

 Point 6: Overall, this paper is informative and well-structured, providing a valuable resource for researchers and practitioners interested in the application of AR in the industrial sector.

Response 6:  Thank you for helping us to improve the paper.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

The discussion section should explain what exactly athors' contribution is.

 

Author Response

We appreciate the time and effort you and each of the reviewers have dedicated to providing insightful feedback on ways to strengthen our paper. Thus, it is with great pleasure that we resubmit our article for further consideration. We have incorporated changes that reflect the detailed suggestions you have graciously provided. We also hope that our edits and the responses provided below satisfactorily address all the issues and concerns you and the reviewers have noted.

To facilitate your review of our revisions, our point-by-point responses to the questions and comments are provided below.

 

Point 1: The discussion section should explain what exactly athors' contribution is.

Response 1: Thank you for your suggestion. We have included a new paragraph in the Discussion section that highlights our contribution.

Author Response File: Author Response.docx

Reviewer 3 Report

Paper is accepted in current form 

 

Author Response

We appreciate the time and effort you and each of the reviewers have dedicated to providing insightful feedback on ways to strengthen our paper.