Industry and construction 4.0 have high expectations of AR technologies in terms of productivity gains and quality improvement. Numerous proofs of concept demonstrate significant returns on investment but difficulties occur when it comes to large-scale deployment in operational dynamic environments exposed to variable lighting conditions. To overcome these limitations IT leaders (Google/Apple/Microsoft) investigate ARCloud technology in building a 3D map of the environment in the cloud which can be updated and shared by any AR device, allowing collaborative AR experiences and a more robust and accurate 3D registration. Unfortunately, the early-stage ARCloud implementations do not fully meet industry and construction 4.0 requirements and European players may face a lock-in situation if no sovereign solution is proposed to them. ARtwin project aims to provide European Industry and Construction 4.0 with a ARCloud platform that meets their needs. This platform deployed on a private distant or/and edge cloud ensures the privacy of information and offers three key services: (i) an accurate and robust 3D registration for any AR device in large-scale and dynamic environments, allowing to present relevant information to workers at the right time and place, (ii) reduction of the difference between the physical and digital world by continuously maintaining the Digital Twin/BIM model based on vision sensors available in the factory or on construction sites, (iii) display of complex 3D augmentations on any AR device by remotely rendering them in the cloud with ultra-low-latency. The ARtwin platform and services will be validated in operational environments through two use cases in Industry 4.0 and a use case in Construction 4.0. The results of the format of the 3D map stored in the cloud will be submitted to standardization bodies to prevent lock-in situation with few vendors and encourage an ecosystem with a diverse range of solutions providers (small players, academics, etc.)

Climate change is happening and the need for a higher performance crisis planning&command tools and new methodologies arises from the increasing frequency and impact of a variety of natural hazards, including floods, earthquakes, droughts, landslides, and wildfires that are responsible for dead, wounded, or displaced people and severe destruction and disruption of property and industry with clear impact on economy for years after the event. Natural disasters, which can be related with the 1,672 recorded disasters (Floods, storms, wildfires, heatwaves) in Europe between 1970 and 2019 that took 159,438 lives and impacted the economy in excess of 420M€. The objective of OVERWATCH is to develop an integrated holographic management system for response, recovery and mitigation of emergencies and disasters, by enabling the authorities to quickly deploy and manage air, water and ground assets and personnel through decision support tools integrated in an immersive and decentralized command platform. This system will be supported by combining several services already offered by EGNSS and Copernicus Emergency Management and Security (for example and HAS and SAR) with digital technologies, artificial intelligence, drones, 5G, augmented reality which will provide the required performance to make this system a valuable resource for citizen, land and infrastructure protection.

The Pledger project aims at delivering a new architectural paradigm and a toolset that will pave the way for next generation edge computing infrastructures, tackling the modern challenges faced today and coupling the benefits of low latencies on the edge, with the robustness and resilience of cloud infrastructures. The project will deliver a set of tools and processes that will enable a) edge computing providers to enhance the stability and performance effectiveness of their edge infrastructures, through modelling the overheads and optimal groupings of concurrently running services, runtime analysis and adaptation, thus gaining a competitive advantage b) edge computing adopters to understand the computational nature of their applications, investigate abstracted and understandable QoS metrics, facilitate trust and smart contracting over their infrastructures and identify how they can balance their cost and performance to optimise their competitiveness and monitor their SLAs. By providing this toolset, the project will allow also third parties to act as independent validators of QoS features in IoT applications, enabling new decentralised applications and business models, thus filling a large gap in the emerging edge/IoT computing market landscape. The project validates its results through three use cases which are very relevant for the innovative edge/cloud computing concepts it plans to introduce: namely in manufacturing, mixed reality and smart cities application domains.

VOXReality is an ambitious project whose goal will be to facilitate and exploit the convergence of two important technologies, natural language processing (NLP) and computer vision (CV). Both technologies are experiencing a huge performance increase due to the emergence of data-driven methods, specifically machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI). On the one hand, CV/ML are driving the extended reality (XR) revolution beyond what was possible up to now, and, on the other, speech-based interfaces and text-based content understanding are revolutionising human-machine and human-human interaction. VOXReality will employ an economical approach to combine these two. VOXReality will pursue the integration of language- and vision-based AI models with either unidirectional or bidirectional exchanges between the two modalities. Vision systems drive both AR and VR, while language understanding adds a natural way for humans to interact with the back-ends of XR systems or create multimodal XR experiences combining vision and sound. The results of the project will be twofold: 1) a set of pretrained next-generation XR models combining, in various levels and ways, language and vision AI and enabling richer, more natural immersive experiences that are expected to boost XR adoption, and 2) a set of applications using these models to demonstrate innovations in various sectors. The above technologies will be validated through three use cases: 1) Personal Assistants that are an emerging type of digital technology that seeks to support humans in their daily tasks, with their core functionalities related to human-to-machine interaction; 2) Virtual Conferences that are completely hosted and run online, typically using a virtual conferencing platform that sets up a shared virtual environment, allowing their attendees to view or participate from anywhere in the world; 3) Theaters where VOXReality will combine language translation, audiovisual user associations and AR VFX triggered by predetermined speech.

The FLEXI-cross project aims to increased security and reliability of EU border checks for people and goods, while enhancing and improving the border management capabilities, through the development, deployment and validation of a toolkit of innovative border-checking solutions, in real operational environments, addressing road, rail and port borders. The resulting flexibility and dynamicity of border check planning will offer novel capabilities such as dynamic deployment of check-points and support via mobile applications for border personnel, while guaranteeing high level of security, privacy of personal data and protection of people's fundamental rights. Through the FLEXI-cross solutions the following functionalities will be delivered: i) anti-trafficking and anti-smuggling protection via predictive risk assessment of vehicle and people, ii) enhanced border security through portable biometric based checks, iii) secure person verification through real-time multi-source cross-referencing, iv) flexible, fast and cost-effective deployment of ad-hoc Border Check Points (BCP), v) secure, private and traceable sensitive / personal data exchange based on blockchain technology and vi) increased safety and improved experience for border-personnel based on advanced Human Machine Interfaces and enhanced situational awareness via Augmented Reality (AR). To achieve these ambitious goals, the FLEXI-cross project engages key European border authorities and end-users (police, port/rail operators, etc.) and brings them together with leading SW and technology developers, research organizations and innovative SMEs, to co-design the requirements and the solutions and to validate the project outcomes. This collaboration will drive the deployment of three state-of-the-art border-checking trial facilities, to enable real life trials in diverse operational environments, namely, vehicle-based road border crossing, rail-based border-crossing and port embarkation/disembarkation.