2025 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

The rapid advancements in the digital era have transformed manufacturing training by incorporating state-of-the-art Extended Reality (XR) technologies. These immersive technologies proved to enhance training by simulating real-world scenarios, enabling trainees to develop problem-solving skills in safe and monitored environments. While most XR applications in manufacturing focus on single-user interfaces to build individual skills, collaborative training is essential for fostering teamwork and improving production efficiency. Multi-user XR platforms offer the potential to expose trainees to interdependent assembly tasks, emphasizing coordination and shared decision-making. Thus, this work explores the impact of multi-user MR training modules on manufacturing training. In prior work, our team developed an immersive single-user MR training module on hydraulic grippers that successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of MR technology for manufacturing training. Building on these promising results, we have recently upgraded the MR training module from a single-user to a multi-user experience, enabling a collaborative MR-shared environment for trainees. This study introduces the new design for the collaborative multi-user MR module. It investigates the impact of collaboration within MR-shared training settings on learning dynamics, focusing on studying task completion time and problem-solving. The study involved 103 participants enrolled in a Fluid Power course, utilizing the new collaborative MR module to expose trainees to the design and assembly of a hydraulic bike. The MR-shared environment synchronizes up to four MR headsets (HoloLens 2), allowing multiple users to collaborate within the same MR scene and solve the assigned problems. This synchronized environment was developed using Microsoft Azure, a cloud computing platform, and Photon Cloud, a software service (SaaS) solution for developing multiplayer experiences. A team dynamics and collaboration assessment survey was utilized to evaluate participants’ collaborative problem-solving skills, focusing on their performance. Additionally, the System Usability Scale (SUS) and Simulation Task Load Index (SIM-TLX) were integrated to assess participants’ attitudes toward the tool’s (MR-shared environment) usability and to explore their physical and mental workload during the assembly tasks.