A Fog Computing and Cloudlet Based Augmented Reality System for the Industry 4.0 Shipyard.

Area of Science:

• Industrial Engineering
• Computer Science
• Maritime Technology

Background:

• Industry 4.0 emphasizes technologies like Augmented Reality (AR) for advanced manufacturing.
• Shipbuilding operators require efficient access to critical information, which AR can facilitate.
• Navantia's
• Shipyard 4.0
• project explores AR applications in shipyards.

Purpose of the Study:

• To present Navantia's Industrial AR (IAR) architecture.
• To evaluate the performance of AR in shipyard environments using cloud, cloudlet, and fog computing.
• To analyze the impact of different computing paradigms on latency and network traffic.

Main Methods:

• Development of an Industrial AR (IAR) architecture based on cloudlets and fog computing.
• Evaluation of the IAR architecture in real-world shipyard scenarios.
• Performance testing with varying payload sizes and concurrent users, simulating Microsoft HoloLens applications.

Main Results:

• Fog computing offers the fastest response times for small data payloads (<128 KB).
• Cloudlet solutions demonstrate superior performance for larger file transfers.
• Under high concurrent user loads, cloudlets significantly outperform fog computing in terms of response delay.

Conclusions:

• The proposed IAR architecture effectively supports low-latency, QoS-aware applications in distributed shipyard environments.
• Cloudlet and fog computing paradigms offer distinct advantages depending on payload size and user load.
• The study validates the potential of AR integrated with edge computing for enhancing shipbuilding operations.