Environmental Impact Assessment of Augmented Reality Technology Implementation

Abstract

Sustainability has a been a buzz word for a long term since the inception of the Brundtland commission. With the Paris agreement in 2016 and the on-going cli- matic changes have all lead to one solution, i.e., sustainability. On the other hand, the fourth industrial revolution that was spoken about back in 2011 has taken off widely with the use of robotics, machine learning, system integration, and big data. This has steered industries to use new techniques to be incorporated like sustainable manufacturing. There are a lot of technologies under Industry 4.0, one such device that is considered here is Augmented Reality. The technology is very useful as it can reduce human errors and help inexperienced technicians to work efficiently with the help of all preloaded data in its cloud library. There has been very less research in the field of LCA on AR devices. This study focuses on the environmental impacts during the life cycle of the AR device and the environmental benefits of using AR technology.

We have adopted a mixed approach as the methodology for this study. A string of interviews and literature study has been performed to conduct a LCIA study with the help of OpenLCA software. By the end of the research, the readers can find the results accomplished from the Life cycle assessment study such as the environmental benefits and consequences. Transport sector, shipping, is found to be the biggest concern in terms of environmental loads. Climate change is one impact category which is disturbed very much due to the transport sector.

The method and results aid the stakeholders and the actors to evaluate its sustain- able performance in the implementation of AR in remanufacturing process and the impacts to the environment. By adding a few data gaps in the current study, this study can help to a wide extent in improving the efficiency of processes. reduce hu- man error and inexperience at the manufacturing sector. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis is carried out to find critical variables that affect the feasibility of our re- sults. Finally, recommendations are also provided where the environmental impacts can be minimised.