Industrial Augmented Reality (IAR) is one of the key technologies pointed out by the Industry 4.0 paradigm as a tool for improving industrial processes and for maximizing worker efficiency. Training and assistance are two of the most popular IAR-enabled applications, since they may significantly facilitate, support, and optimize production and assembly tasks in industrial environments. This article presents an IAR collaborative application developed jointly by Navantia, one of the biggest European shipbuilders, and the University of A Coruña (Spain). The analysis, design, and implementation of such an IAR application are described thoroughly so as to enable future developers to create similar IAR applications. The IAR application is based on the Microsoft HoloLens smart glasses and is able to assist and to guide shipyard operators during their training and in assembly tasks. The proposed IAR application embeds a novel collaborative protocol that allows operators to visualize and interact in a synchronized way with the same virtual content. Thus, all operators that share an IAR experience see each virtual object positioned at the same physical spot and in the same state. The collaborative application is first evaluated and optimized in terms of packet communications delay and anchor transmission latency, and then, its validation in a shipyard workshop by Navantia’s operators is presented. The performance results show fast response times for regular packets (less than 5 ms), low interference rates in the 5 GHz band, and an anchor transmission latency of up to 30 s. Regarding the validation tests, they allow for obtaining useful insights and feedback from the industrial operators, as well as clear guidelines that will help future developers to face the challenges that will arise when creating the next generation of IAR applications.

Augmented Reality (AR) provides an alternative to the traditional forms of interaction between humans and machines, and facilitates the access to certain technologies to groups of people with special needs like children. For instance, in pediatric healthcare, it is important to help children to feel comfortable during medical procedures and tests that may be performed on them. To tackle such an issue with the help of AR-based solutions, this article presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a novel open-source collaborative framework that enables to develop teaching, training, and monitoring pediatric healthcare applications. Specifically, such a framework allows for building collaborative applications and shared experiences for AR devices, providing functionalities for connecting with other AR devices and enabling real-time visualization and simultaneous interaction with virtual objects. Since all the communications involved in AR interactions are handled by AR devices, the proposed collaborative framework is able to operate autonomously through a Local Area Network (LAN), thus requiring no cloud or external servers. In order to demonstrate the potential of the proposed framework, a practical use case application is presented. Such an application has been designed to motivate pediatric patients and to encourage them to increase their physical activity through AR games. The presented games do not require any previous configuration, as they use ARCore automatic surface detection technology. Moreover, the AR mobile gaming framework allows multiple players to engage in the same AR experience, so children can interact and collaborate among them sharing the same AR content. In addition, the proposed AR system provides a remote web application that is able to collect and to visualize data on patient use, aiming to provide healthcare professionals with qualified data about the mobility and mood of their patients through an intuitive and user-friendly web tool. Finally, to determine the performance of the proposed AR system, this article presents its evaluation in terms of latency and processing time. The results show that both times are low enough to provide a good user experience.

In recent years, the education sector has incorporated the use of new technologies and computing devices into classrooms, which allowed for implementing new ways for enhancing teaching and learning. One of these new technologies is augmented reality (AR), which enables creating experiences that mix reality and virtual elements in an attractive and visual way, thus helping teachers to foster student interest in learning certain subjects and abstract concepts in novel visual ways. This paper proposes to harness the potential of the latest AR devices in order to enable giving AR-enabled lectures and hands-on labs. Specifically, it proposes an architecture for providing low-latency AR education services in a classroom or a laboratory. Such a low latency is achieved thanks to the use of edge computing devices, which offload the cloud from the traditional tasks that are required by dynamic AR applications (e.g., near real-time data processing, communications among AR devices). Depending on the specific AR application and the number of users, the wireless link (usually WiFi) could be overloaded if the network has not been properly designed, and the overall performance of the application can be compromised, leading to high latency and even to wireless communication failure. In order to tackle this issue, radio channel measurements and simulation results have been performed by means of an in-house developed 3D ray-launching tool, which is able to model and simulate the behaviour of an AR-enabled classroom/laboratory in terms of radio propagation and quality of service. To corroborate the obtained theoretical results, a Microsoft HoloLens 2 teaching application was devised and tested, thus demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed approach.

This paper presents the development of a novel Microsoft HoloLens collaborative application that allows shipyard operators to interact with a virtual clutch during its assembly in a real Turbine workshop. Such an Augmented Reality (AR) experience acts as a virtual guide while assembling different parts of a ship. In particular, the proposed application allows operators to position the clutch on a real environment and interact with it. The application also provides information about the documentation of each part of the clutch, showing its blueprints and physical measurements. The proposed AR application enables collaborative AR experiences, allowing users to visualize the same content and animations at the same time and interact simultaneously with 3D objects from multiple devices. Furthermore, the application is integrated with an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) framework, resulting on an AR-IIoT application that is able to receive and display real-time sensor data on information panels, as well as to trigger actions through actuators by making use of virtual user interfaces.

The development of multiple cultural and social related activities, such as shows related with the performing arts, conferences or presentations rely on facilities such as auditoriums, theatres and conference sites, which are progressively including multiple technological features in order to enhance user experience. There are still however situations in which user experience is limited owing to lack of environment adaption, such as people with disabilities. In this sense, the adoption of Context Aware paradigms within auditoriums can provide adequate functionalities in order to comply with specific needs. This work is aimed at demonstrating the feasibility in enhancing user experience (e.g., improving the autonomy of disabled people) within auditorium and theatre environments, by means of an Augmented Reality (AR) device (HoloLens smart glasses) with wireless system integration. To carry out the demonstration, different elements to build AR applications are described and tested. First, an intensive measurement campaign was performed in a real auditorium in the city of Pamplona (Baluarte Congress Center) in order to evaluate the feasibility of using Wi-Fi enabled AR devices in a complex wireless propagation scenario. The results show that these environments exhibit high levels of interference, owing to the co-existence and non-coordinated operation of multiple wireless communication systems, such as on site and temporary Wi-Fi access points, wireless microphones or communications systems used by performers, staff and users. Deterministic wireless channel estimation based in volumetric 3D Ray Launching have been obtained for the complete scenario volume, in order to assess quality of service metrics. For illustration purposes, a user-friendly application to help hearing impaired people was developed and its main features were tested in the auditorium. Such an application provides users with a 3D virtual space to visualize useful multimedia content like subtitles or additional information about the show, as well as an integrated call button.