A Mixed-reality Learning Environment

The Industry 4.0 vision anticipates that internet technologies will find their way into future factories replacing traditional components by dynamic and intelligent cyber-physical systems (CPS) that combine the physical objects with their digital representation. Reducing the gap between the real and digital world makes the factory environment more flexible, more adaptive, but also demand broader skill of human workers. Interdisciplinary competencies from engineering, information technology, and computer science are required in order to understand and manage the diverse interrelations between physical objects and their digital counterpart. This paper proposes a system architecture for a mixed-reality based learning environment, which combines physical objects and visualization of its digital content via Augmented Reality. It allows to make the dynamic interrelations between real and digital factory visible and tangible. The proposed learning environment is not meant to work as a stand-alone solution, but should enrich existing academic and advanced training curricula.