Smartwatch-Enhanced Interaction with an Advanced Troubleshooting System for Industrial Machines

Smartwatches are unobtrusive everyday devices which can be also exploited for effective gesture-based human-machine interaction. In this paper, we propose the use of a smartwatch to interact with an advanced troubleshooting application to be used in industrial environment. The application is a hypermedia information system aiming at assisting workers in performing preventive and corrective machine maintenance. The smartwatch allows a handsfree interaction, thus facilitating the use of the whole system when wearing personal protective equipment such as gloves or having fingers greased with oil or dust, which prevent operating touch screens. The algorithm for gesture recognition we have devised, which is based on template matching, is described in the paper, together with its experimental validation. Finally, we present a preliminary usability assessment of the overall system, meant as integration of the smartwatch with the hypermedia system.