IMMERSIVE, INTEROPERABLE AND INTUITIVE MIXED REALITY FOR SERVICE IN INDUSTRIAL PLANTS

The authors propose an innovative Mixed Reality solution representing an immersive intuitive and interoperable environment to support service in industrial plants. These methodologies are related to concepts of Industry 4.0. Solutions based on a mix of VR and AR (Virtual and Augmented Reality ) with special attention to the maintenance of industrial machines; indeed the authors propose an overview of this approach and other synergistic techniques. Moreover, alternative instruments are presented and their specific advantages and disadvantages are described. Particularly, the approach is based on the SPIDER, an advanced interoperable interactive CAVE developed by the authors which supports cooperative work of several users involved in training, troubleshooting and supervision are proposed. Last but not least, an overview of projects using same techniques in other fields, such as construction, risk assessment, Virtual Prototyping and Simulation Based Design is presented

Digital Twins for Industry 4.0 in the 6G Era

Having the Fifth Generation (5G) mobile communication system recently rolled out in many countries, the wireless community is now setting its eyes on the next era of Sixth Generation (6G). Inheriting from 5G its focus on industrial use cases, 6G is envisaged to become the infrastructural backbone of future intelligent industry. Especially, a combination of 6G and the emerging technologies of Digital Twins (DT) will give impetus to the next evolution of Industry 4.0 (I4.0) systems. This article provides a survey in the research area of 6G-empowered industrial DT system. With a novel vision of 6G industrial DT ecosystem, this survey discusses the ambitions and potential applications of industrial DT in the 6G era, identifying the emerging challenges as well as the key enabling technologies. The introduced ecosystem is supposed to bridge the gaps between humans, machines, and the data infrastructure, and therewith enable numerous novel application scenarios.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technolog