A worldwide movement in advanced manufacturing countries is seeking to reinvigorate (and revolutionize) the industrial and manufacturing core competencies with the use of the latest advances in information and communications technology. Visual computing plays an important role as the "glue factor" in complete solutions. This article positions visual computing in its intrinsic crucial role for Industrie 4.0 and provides a general, broad overview and points out specific directions and scenarios for future research.

Spacedesign is an innovative Mixed Reality (MR) application addressed to aesthetic design of free form curves and surfaces. It is a unique and comprehensive approach which uses task-specific configurations to support the design workflow from concept to mock-up evaluation and review. The first-phase conceptual design benefits from a workbench-like 3-D display for free hand sketching, surfacing and engineering visualization. Semitransparent stereo glasses augment the pre-production physical prototype by additional shapes, textures and annotations. Both workspaces share a common interface and allow collaboration and cooperation between different experts, who can configure the system for the specific task. A faster design workflow and CAD data consistency can be thus naturally achieved. Tests and collaborations with designers, mainly from automotive industry, are providing systematic feedback for this ongoing research. As far as the authors are concerned, there is no known similar approach that integrates the creation and editing phase of 3D curves and surfaces in Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR). Herein we see the major contribution of our new application

In this paper, we discuss how Cross Reality (XR) and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) can support assembly tasks in hybrid human-machine manufacturing lines. We describe a Cross Reality system, designed to improve efficiency and ergonomics in industrial environments that require manual assembly operations. Our objective is to reduce the high costs of authoring assembly manuals and to improve the process of skills transfer, in particular, in assembly tasks that include workers with disabilities. The automation of short-lived assembly tasks, i.e., manufacturing of limited batches of customized products, does not yield significant returns considering the automation effort necessary and the production time frame. In the design of our XR system, we discuss how aspects of content creation can be automated for short-lived tasks and how seamless interoperability between devices facilitates skills transfer in human-machine hybrid environments.