Forging the Industrial Metaverse for Industry 5.0: Where Extended Reality, IIoT, Opportunistic Edge Computing, and Digital Twins Meet

The Industrial Metaverse can benefit from the concepts fostered by Industry 5.0, since it implies making use of dynamic and up-to-date content, as well as fast human-to-machine interactions. To enable such enhancements, this article proposes the concept of Meta-Operator, which is essentially an industrial worker that follows the principles of Industry 5.0 and interacts with Industrial Metaverse applications and with his/her surroundings through advanced Extended Reality (XR) devices. In order to build the foundations of future Meta-Operators, this article provides a thorough description of the main technologies that support such a concept: the main components of the Industrial Metaverse, the latest XR technologies and accessories and the use of Opportunistic Edge Computing (OEC) communications (to detect and interact with the surrounding Internet of Things (IoT) and Industrial IoT (IIoT) devices). Moreover, this paper analyzes how to create the next generation of Industrial Metaverse applications based on the Industry 5.0 concepts, including the most relevant standardization initiatives, the integration of AR/MR devices with IoT/IIoT solutions, the development of advanced communications and software architectures and the creation of shared experiences and opportunistic collaborative protocols. Finally, this article provides an extensive list of potential Industry 5.0 applications for the Industrial Metaverse and analyzes thoroughly the main challenges and research lines. Thus, this article provides a holistic view and useful guidelines for the future developers and researchers that will create the next generation of applications for the Industrial Metaverse.