Mixed Reality (MR) has launched from science fiction but its entrance in reality can reshape our society. By combining the physical and virtual worlds, it provides novel ways of immersive interactions and experiences and by these means enables a new generation of applications. The most exciting and challenging ones support collaborative, multi-user operation in large geographical scale, require real-time environment comprehension and high visual fidelity. The success or failure is definitely impacted by the capabilities and performance limits of edge cloud platforms and 5G/6G networks providing the offloading features for CPU/GPU intensive MR functions. In addition, the desired quality of user experience calls for further mechanisms at the application level hiding the consequences of varying network characteristics. In this paper, we propose a novel edge cloud based architecture for future remote-rendered MR applications supporting low-latency immersive interactions. Our contribution is threefold. First, the system architecture is presented focusing on the remote rendering, 3D simulation and environment detection control loops. Second, we highlight the main features of our proof-of-concept prototype and our dedicated application, namely the Mixed Reality version of a Rocket League inspired game. Third, the concepts are validated via experiments in a Beyond 5G infrastructure where we analyze the operation and latency characteristics of the overall system. In addition, the quality of the user experience is also evaluated via real-life experiments conducted as part of a student competition. The results show that the latency and jitter characteristics of the most sensitive render loop can be managed efficiently together by a network-level control (slice priorities) and an application-level (dynamic jitter buffer) mechanism.

Augmented Reality (AR) applications can reshape our society enabling novel ways of interactions and immersive experiences in many fields. However, multi-user and collaborative AR applications pose several challenges. The expected user experience requires accurate position and orientation information for each device and precise synchronization of the respective coordinate systems in real-time. Unlike mobile phones or AR glasses running on battery with constrained resource capacity, cloud and edge platforms can provide the computing power for the core functions under the hood. In this paper, we propose a novel edge cloud based platform for multi-user AR applications realizing an essential coordination service among the users. The latency critical, computation intensive Simultaneous Localization And Mapping (SLAM) function is offloaded from the device to the edge cloud infrastructure. Our solution is built on open-source SLAM libraries and the Robot Operating System (ROS). Our contribution is threefold. First, we propose an extensible, edge cloud based AR architecture. Second, we develop a proof-of-concept prototype supporting multiple devices. Third, a dedicated measurement methodology is described and the overall performance of the system is evaluated via real experiments.

Safe and efficient Human-Robot Collaboration (HRC) is an essential feature of future Industry 4.0 production systems which requires sophisticated collision avoidance mechanisms with intense computation need. Digital twins provide a novel way to test the impact of different control decisions in a simulated virtual environment even in parallel. In addition, Virtual/Augmented Reality (VR/AR) applications can revolutionize future industry environments. Each component requires extreme computational power which can be provided by cloud platforms but at the cost of higher delay and jitter. Moreover, clouds bring a versatile set of novel techniques easing the life of both developers and operators. Can these applications be realized and operated on today's systems? In this demonstration, we give answers to this question via real experiments.