Exploiting Extended Reality under the Manufacturing as a Service paradigm

The advent of new technologies and concepts such as Extended Reality (XR), Cloud Manufacturing, Digital Twin, Industrial Internet of Things is completely changing the manufacturing landscape. Innovative digital tools are available to increase the competitiveness and efficiency of companies. The XR can support the Smart Operator in production, maintenance and training activities. Similarly, Manufacturing as a Service, which is a variation of Cloud Manufacturing, can make corporate architectural systems more flexible and scalable. In this paper, some preliminary results relating to the European 5G-ERA project and the synergistic work that the companies CAL-TEK, TWI and HAL Robotics are conducting is shown. An XR-oriented architecture is proposed, whose usefulness is emphasized by the use of the MaaS concept, and the implementation of a Mixed Reality application is shown, to support an on-site operator. Future developments concern the implementation of a Virtual Reality application for the off-site operator, and the use of the 5G-ERA middleware to exploit the potential of the MaaS paradigm.