How is extended reality bridging human and cyber-physical systems in the IoT-empowered logistics and supply chain management?
Yung Po Tsang, Tingming Yang, Zhijing Chen, C.H. Wu, Kim Hua Tan
Abstract
Due to the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), logistics and supply chain operations have been digitally transformed. Physical objects are interconnected to perform real-time monitoring and decision support through cyber-physical systems. Besides machine-to-machine communications, humans play an essential role in IoT-empowered supply chain operations to monitor and configure IoT devices and interact with IoT systems for enhanced industrial intelligence. Extended reality (XR) technologies are exploited for immersive visualisation to strengthen the connectivity between human and cyber-physical systems. However, the role and development of XR in the IoT-empowered supply chain scenarios are not revealed. Therefore, this article attempts to introduce readers to the latest XR technologies and summarise significant research opportunities/challenges raised by the current literature to facilitate further interest in this topic. The systematic literature review process analysed 71 research articles from 1,207 relevant publications using text mining models, including the bag of words (BoW) and LexRank algorithms. Consequently, the article synthesises emerging XR solutions for human-cyber-physical interaction to guide the next-generation XR research for logistics and supply chain management. At the same time, human-centricity can be emphasised in future research agendas for Industry 5.0.