The EU-funded EMPYREAN project (empyrean-horizon.eu) aims to establish a hyper-distributed computing paradigm, leveraging collaborative, heterogeneous IoT devices and federated resources. EMPYREAN focuses on developing technologies for efficient AI workload processing, secure distributed edge storage and cloud-native application development. It will offer open and standardised APIs and use open-source platforms. EMPYREAN's capabilities will be demonstrated through three use cases: advanced manufacturing, smart agriculture, and warehouse automation.

An augmented reality (AR) cueing method designed to improve teleoperator performance under conditions of display-control misalignment is investigated. The teleoperation task was designed to mimic the operation of space robot arms, which are manipulated using hand controllers (HCs) to orient and translate the body-fixed coordinates at the end effector (EE). Cameras provide visual feedback. However, the pose of the EE seen through the camera hinders operator performance due to misalignments between the displayed EE axes and the HC axes. In this paper, the coordinate system of the EE is graphically overlaid in three dimensions on the video views with uniquely colored axes using AR. The same color scheme is used to label the corresponding axes on the HCs. Operators use these color cues to map each axis on the HCs to the corresponding colored axis of the augmented coordinates at the EE to obtain EE movement in the desired direction. Between-groups and within-participant experiments comparing EE trajectory distance, deviation from path, navigation errors, and HC axis usage were used to determine the effectiveness of the augmented coordinates over conventional teleoperation without augmented coordinates. Significant reductions in EE trajectory distance, deviation from path, navigation errors, and single-axis HC usage were observed when participants manipulated the remote robot with augmented coordinates. The results demonstrate that the use of simple AR cues in remote robot arm teleoperation is beneficial to the operator.

End-effector control of robots using just remote camera views is difficult due to lack of perceived correspondence between the joysticks and the end-effector coordinate frame. This paper reports the positive effects of augmented reality visual cues on operator performance during end-effector controlled tele-operation using only camera views. Our solution is to overlay a color-coded coordinate system on the end-effector of the robot using AR techniques. This mapped and color-coded coordinate system is then directly mapped to similarly color-coded joysticks used for control of both position and orientation. The AR view along with mapped markings on the joystick give the user a clear notion of the effect of their joystick movements on the end-effector of the robot. All camera views display this registered dynamic overlay information on-demand. An insertion task was used to compare performance with and without the coordinate mapping using fifteen subjects. Preliminary results indicate a significant reduction in distance and reversal errors