Conference Agenda

The metaverse, building on recent advancements in Virtual Reality (VR) technology, will be a significant driver of social change. Impacting how people live their lives and fostering new applications across fields such as entertainment, fitness, and rehabilitation, these technological advancements facilitate higher engagement of users through immersive experiences. In the short-term, this helps users to overcome barriers to physical activity and it promotes lifelong retention of physical and cognitive skills, a fundamental part of healthy ageing. To fulfil this potential, VR technology needs to be able to empower individuals regardless of age, capabilities, and prior VR experience. However, current fitness applications largely target younger users, often overlooking the needs and limitations of older or vulnerable groups. This work, the result of a transdisciplinary collaboration between therapy science, health psychology, and software engineering, introduces a user-centred approach to utilize VR exergaming for promoting physical activity, tailored to individual capabilities and preferences. Our inclusive approach incorporates a comprehensive user model based on static and dynamic ability attributes. These are assessed through questionnaires, sensor data, and a platform for gamified VR fitness tests, such as the presented prototype for reach and mobility. This model allows for personalized recommendations of VR exergames. We showcase several adaptive exergame prototypes that can dynamically adjust challenges based on real-time sensor data, such as heart rate. Addressing inequality in current VR fitness experiences, this work contributes to the broader understanding of VR exergaming to facilitate the development of VR interventions for promoting physical activity among older or vulnerable communities.

In the pursuit of modern and future-thinking education, students must be more oriented towards research and the practice-oriented development of products and processes. Experts from various disciplines are currently forced to use complex measurement and equipment infrastructure but are unable to adequately combine and visualize the increasingly complex results from the various fields in a suitable form. To explain these complex phenomena to students as intuitively as possible, the augmented reality app ARCTIC (‛Augmented Reality Comes To Interactive Campus‛) was designed for practice-oriented lectures. This approach enables the projection of (simulation) data into physical spaces using smartphones and facilitates user interaction with 3D models. By using open-source principles, the app promotes collaboration and enables experts from different fields to provide cost-effective solutions for teaching individuality. This approach not only improves the accessibility of the app but also promotes a community-oriented, sustainable development model. The app was tested under pedagogical supervision in real conditions with students from various disciplines of chemical and process engineering, as well as AEC companies. The evaluation showed that students and company representatives are extremely open to the developed AR solution. They would strongly support the further integration of the app into teaching. This was also evident from the surveys, in which students participated constructively and contributed further ideas. Augmented reality is a promising technology with the potential to revolutionize teaching. ARCTIC is a successful example of how AR can be integrated into the classroom to explain complex phenomena intuitively and interactively to students.

The advent of Industry 4.0 has led to the need to train highly skilled operators in complex and dynamic environments, through the convergence of physical and digital technologies. In this context, indoor navigation plays a crucial role in the training of Operators 4.0, allowing them to acquire spatial knowledge and specific skills to operate effectively in advanced industrial environments. However, the challenges associated with this technology, such as environmental complexity and obstacles, require an innovative approach to operator training. Mixed Reality (MR) represents a promising technological innovation for the development of these systems. Indeed, MR enables the co-represence of digital and real world, by content overlapping and integrated interaction between virtual and real assets, promoting efficiency, safety and user engagement. Within this scenario, the paper proposes a Holographic Navigation (HoloNav) methodology based on spatial and cloud computing for the development of an indoor navigation application according to a transdisciplinary approach. The application is deployed on the Microsoft HoloLens 2 as MR device, using Microsoft Azure Spatial Anchors (ASA) and Cloud Storage Account resources. This study aims to provide an applied methodology and guidelines for application development, and to analyze the broader social implications and potential for social change of such MR technology to support training processes. The proposed ASA-based HoloNav approach was applied through a case study, where a tour inside the spare parts warehouse was developed for new operators who need to start familiarizing themselves with all the different areas.

The paper describes the use of immersive technologies and digital twins in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. Immersive technologies have immense potential to improve interdisciplinary collaboration as they utilise a visual representation of virtual objects in their real-world perspective. This immersion facilitates effective communication between all parties involved, e.g. to identify errors during the planning and construction of buildings. A specific example of such interdisciplinary collaboration is kitchen planning. The architect draws the house and room plans, the kitchen planner plans the kitchen according to the homeowner's wishes and the craftsmen then carry out their installations according to the plans for electricity, water, and heating. All plans are based on flat floors and perpendicular walls. However, this is rarely the case in a real building. The challenge with the exact visual representation of virtual objects in the real world using AR therefore lies in the positioning of objects such as a cupboard in relation to the non-orthogonal coordinate systems that result for each room from the real floors and walls. The paper presents an assistance system that integrates immersive technologies and digital twins. It is a solution approach for the transformation of object properties based on orthogonal coordinate systems into the non-orthogonal coordinate systems prevalent in reality. With the assistance system, the kitchen planner can create his plans using virtual reality (VR), customers can experience their kitchen virtually and the craftsmen can then be guided using augmented reality (AR), e.g. by precisely localising drilling positions for cabinets.