PoseMMR: A Collaborative Mixed Reality Authoring Tool for Character Animation

Developing a vehicle is always a long and complex task. This is especially true for autonomous cars. Tasks performed by the driver are taken over by the vehicle and must be performed with maximum reliability. Developing these systems is a difficult task, especially due to limited testing capabilities. Testing a vehicle in a closed environment is safe and controlled, but the variety of test scenarios is limited. By using mixed reality environments, one can create a diverse environment around a real test vehicle, with traffic, obstacles, and unexpected situations. The real movement of the test vehicle allows testing decision and motion planning level vehicular functions. Information from the virtual world can be considered as input to the vehicle sensor. Mixed reality or digital twin simulation environments can greatly assist the autonomous vehicle development process and also serve as a basis for validation procedures for such systems. This article introduces a mixed reality simulation environment that integrates a real test vehicle into a virtual environment, can handle other real and virtual obstacles, contains traffic simulations, and visualizes all of these.

A mixed reality environment for collaborative product design and development

Digital hydraulics is a discrete technology that integrates advanced dynamic system controls, digital electronics, and machine learning to enhance fluid power systems’ performance, overall efficiency, and controllability. A mechanically actuated inline three-piston variable displacement digital pump was previously proposed and designed. The inline three-piston pump incorporates complex mechanical and hydraulic subsystems and highly coupled mechanisms. The complexity of the utilized subsystems poses challenges when assessing the viability of the conceptual design. Therefore, this work focuses on designing, developing, and implementing a collaborative virtual platform involving a digitized module showcasing the internal mechanical structure of the digital pump utilizing mixed reality (MR) technology. MR technology is acknowledged as the forthcoming evolution of the human–machine interface in the real–virtual environment utilizing computers and wearables. This technology permits running simulations that examine the complexity of highly coupled systems, like the digital pump, where understanding the physical phenomenon is far too intricate. The developed MR platform permits multiple users to collaborate in a synchronized immersive MR environment to study and analyze the applicability of the pump’s design and the adequacy of the operated mechanisms. The collaborative MR platform was designed and developed on the Unity game engine, employing Microsoft Azure and Photon Unity Networking to set up the synchronized MR environment. The platform involves a fully interactive virtual module on the digital pump design, developed in multiple stages using Microsoft’s Mixed Reality Tool Kit (MRTK) for Unity and deployed in the synchronized MR environment through a HoloLens 2 MR headset. A research study involving 71 participants was carried out at Purdue University. The study’s objective was to explore the impact of the collaborative MR environment on understanding the complexity and operation of the digital pump. It also sought to assess the effectiveness of MR in facilitating collaboration among fluid power stakeholders in a synchronized digital reality setting to study, diagnose, and control their complex systems. Surveys were designed and completed by all 71 participants after experiencing the MR platform. The results indicate that approximately 75% of the participants expressed positive attitudes toward their overall MR platform experience, with particular appreciation for its immersive nature and the synchronized collaborative environment it provided. More than 70% of the participants agreed that the pump’s collaborative MR platform was essential for studying and understanding the complexity and intricacy of the digital pump’s mechanical structure. Overall, the results demonstrate that the MR platform effectively facilitates the visualization of the complex pump’s internal structure, inspection of the assembly of each of the involved subsystems, and testing the applicability of the complicated mechanisms.

Lower body tracking and user experience analysis are ongoing challenges in immersive technologies and biomechanics research, respectively. Particularly, in immersive technologies like mixed reality, there are limited research applications in user comfort and experience, and locomotion. In this paper, we aimed to conduct a cross-disciplinary research (by combining the elements of Biomechanics and human–computer interaction) in understanding the impact of user experience and immersive technologies induced symptoms in virtual and mixed reality environments for obstacle clearance tasks. For this, we created obstacle clearance applications for Oculus Quest and Microsoft HoloLens. Also, we conducted a user study with 12 participants under two conditions (virtual reality and mixed reality) in obstacle clearance behavior of varying heights. The results from our study indicated that the levels of immersion and enjoyment were significantly higher in virtual reality compared to mixed reality. In terms of virtual reality-induced symptoms, the participants found the mixed reality environment to be slightly more comfortable than virtual reality.

We visualize life-size sequential photographs of sports activities in a mixed reality (MR) environment. Wearing a video-see-through head-mounted display, an observer records the motions of a player using a handheld camera. Our system then places billboards in the three-dimensional MR space, on which the sequential photographs of the player’s motion are presented at life-size. In a user study, we found that the observers perceived the size of the motions more accurately than when viewing sequential photographs on a monitor display.

Collaboration and guidance are key aspects of many software tasks. In traditional desktop software, such aspects are well supported through built-in collaboration functions or general-purpose techniques such as screen and video sharing. In Mixed Reality environments, where users carry out actions in a three-dimensional space, collaboration and guidance may also be required. However, other users may or may not be using the same Mixed Reality interface. Users may not have access to the same information, the same visual representation, or the same interaction affordances. These asymmetries make communication and collaboration between users harder. To address asymmetries in Mixed Reality environments, we introduce Interactive Mixed-Dimensional Media. In these media, the visual representation of information streams can be changed between 2D and 3D. Different representations can be chosen automatically, based on context, or through associated interaction techniques that give users control over exploring spatial, temporal, and dimensional levels of detail. This ensures that any information or interaction makes sense across different dimensions, interfaces and spaces. We have deployed these techniques in three different contexts: mixed-reality telepresence for physical task instruction, video-based instruction for VR tasks, and live interaction between a VR user and a non-VR user. From these works, we show that Mixed Reality environments that provide users with interactive mixed-dimensional media interfaces improve performance and user experience in collaboration and guidance tasks.

The ability to interact with virtual objects using gestures would allow users to improve their experience in Mixed Reality (MR) environments, especially when they use AR headsets. Today, MR head-mounted displays like the HoloLens integrate hand gesture based interaction allowing users to take actions in MR environments. However, the proposed interactions remain limited. In this paper, we propose to combine a Leap Motion Controller (LMC) with a HoloLens in order to improve gesture interaction with virtual objects. Two main issues are presented: an interactive calibration procedure for the coupled HoloLens-LMC device and an intuitive hand-based interaction approach using LMC data in the HoloLens environment. A set of first experiments was carried out to evaluate the accuracy and the usability of the proposed approach.

Augmented Reality and Mixed Reality technologies make us feel the real world and the virtual world are mixed with each other through visual matching. However, existing mixed reality contents using these technologies have a limitation that interact only with virtual objects and cannot interact with real objects. If a dynamic real object need to be influenced by a virtual object, or vice versa, illusion of Mixed Reality can be broken by the incongruity of the interaction. If these limitations are improved, real objects, which were always static, can operate dynamically and interact with virtual objects, so becomes difficult to distinguish between real objects and virtual objects. In this paper, we propose extended interactions in a mixed reality environment that can give illusion which is difficult to distinguish between real objects and virtual objects. And to confirm this, we implement authoring environment based Hololens.

For mixed reality applications, where reality and virtual reality are spatially merged and aligned in interactive real-time, we propose a pure voxel representation as a rendering and interaction method of choice. We show that voxels\textemdash gap-less volumetric pixels in a regular grid in space\textemdash allow for an actual user experience of a mixed reality environment, for a seamless blending of virtual and real, and for a sense of presence and co-presence in such an environment. If everything is based on voxels, even if coarse, visual coherence is achieved inherently. We argue the case for voxels by (1) conceptually defining and illustrating voxel-based mixed reality, (2) describing the computational feasibility, (3) presenting a fully functioning, low resolution prototype, (4) empirically exploring the user experience, and finally (5) discussing current work and future directions for voxel-based mixed reality. This work is not the first that utilises voxels for mixed reality, but is the first that has an holistic view on voxel-based mixed realities as an effective way of experiencing and interacting with mixed reality environments.

BackgroundApplications of robotics in daily life are becoming essential by creating new possibilities in different fields, especially in the collaborative environment. The potentials of collaborative robots are tremendous as they can work in the same workspace as humans. A framework employing a top-notch technology for collaborative robots will surely be worthwhile for further research.ObjectiveThis study aims to present the development of a novel framework for the collaborative robot using mixed reality.MethodsThe framework uses Unity and Unity Hub as a cross-platform gaming engine and project management tool to design the mixed reality interface and digital twin. It also uses the Windows Mixed Reality platform to show digital materials on holographic display and the Azure mixed reality services to capture and expose digital information. Eventually, it uses a holographic device (HoloLens 2) to execute the mixed reality–based collaborative system.ResultsA thorough experiment was conducted to validate the novel framework for mixed reality–based control of a collaborative robot. This framework was successfully applied to implement a collaborative system using a 5–degree of freedom robot (xArm-5) in a mixed reality environment. The framework was stable and worked smoothly throughout the collaborative session. Due to the distributed nature of cloud applications, there is a negligible latency between giving a command and the execution of the physical collaborative robot.ConclusionsOpportunities for collaborative robots in telerehabilitation and teleoperation are vital as in any other field. The proposed framework was successfully applied in a collaborative session, and it can also be applied in other similar potential applications for robust and more promising performance.

This work aims to develop a platform for managing Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) devices, enabling multiple users to engage in collaborative and immersive experiences occurring both in the physical and digital world. The proposed solution addresses challenges in synchronization, data transmission, and real-time rendering, so that the multiple participants - either co-located or geographically dispersed - can share a unified, high-fidelity experience. This research intends to advance mixed reality technologies for education, entertainment, and business purposes. To demonstrate this cross-device approach, an application using the MagicLeap2 and MetaQuest3 devices is implemented. This application allows various users to collaboratively interact within the same mixed reality environment. Unity3D is the core framework of this system, and OpenXR is the layer that ensures hardware compatibility.

Background: The purpose of a rehabilitation device is to generate tasks among cognitive difficulty stimulating the area of the cerebellum with no-automatics tasks when the situation is new to subject. An emerging technology, which overcomes these shortcomings, is the Mixed Reality. The aim of the study is to evaluate a possible updating of the prototype for rehabilitation of ataxic patients implementing exergame in Mixed Reality. Material and Methods: The version of the prototype based on Microsoft Kinect device and Arduino board with accelerometer/gyroscope sensor, presented in the previous congress, is compared with a reproduction of the same exergame in Mixed Reality environment with the HoloLens™ 2. The exergame consists in a pointing and reaching exercise to improve the control of upper limb during daily-life actions. Two subject performed the same exercise on the two different systems to investigate the differences between the systems. Results and Conclusion: The evaluation between the two systems was set up by analysing the differences between the subject's performances with the Kinect-based prototype and the HoloLens application: 3D trajectories and kinematics quantities. Despite of the restricted area of work, the high sample rate of HoloLens permits to follow much-unexpected patient's movements. The application of Mixed Reality for specific rehabilitation allows considering the requests of the therapists and the need of the patient to be always connected with the real world around him instead that in a total virtual space without real reference.

Virtual and mixed reality technology has advanced tremendously over the past several years. This nascent medium has the potential to transform how people communicate over distance, train for unfamiliar tasks, operate in challenging environments, and how they visualize, interact, and make decisions based on complex data. At the same time, the marketplace has experienced a proliferation of network-connected devices and generalized sensors that are becoming increasingly accessible and ubiquitous. As the Internet of Things expands to encompass a predicted 50 billion connected devices by 2020, the volume and complexity of information generated in pervasive and virtualized environments will continue to grow exponentially. The convergence of these trends demands a theoretically grounded research agenda that can address emerging challenges for human-information interaction (HII). Virtual and mixed reality environments can provide controlled settings where HII phenomena can be observed and measured, new theories developed, and novel algorithms and interaction techniques evaluated. In this paper, we describe the intersection of pervasive computing with virtual and mixed reality, identify current research gaps and opportunities to advance the fundamental understanding of HII, and discuss implications for the design and development of cyber-human systems for both military and civilian use.

The recent pandemic, war, and oil crises have caused many to reconsider their need to travel for education, training, and meetings. Providing assistance and training remotely has thus gained importance for many applications, from industrial maintenance to surgical telemonitoring. Current solutions such as video conferencing platforms lack essential communication cues such as spatial referencing, which negatively impacts both time completion and task performance. Mixed Reality (MR) offers opportunities to improve remote assistance and training, as it opens the way to increased spatial clarity and large interaction space. We contribute a survey of remote assistance and training in MR environments through a systematic literature review to provide a deeper understanding of current approaches, benefits and challenges. We analyze 62 articles and contextualize our findings along a taxonomy based on degree of collaboration, perspective sharing, MR space symmetry, time, input and output modality, visual display, and application domain. We identify the main gaps and opportunities in this research area, such as exploring collaboration scenarios beyond one-expert-to-one-trainee, enabling users to move across the reality-virtuality spectrum during a task, or exploring advanced interaction techniques that resort to hand or eye tracking. Our survey informs and helps researchers in different domains, including maintenance, medicine, engineering, or education, build and evaluate novel MR approaches to remote training and assistance. All supplemental materials are available at https://augmented-perception.org/publications/2023-training-survey.html.

Students often find it difficult to understand phenomena of everyday life that occur in the natural world, such as the phenomenon of expansion and contraction of liquids, in which there are many misinterpretations. To address this difficulty, this paper suggests another perspective on the didactic approach based on Mixed Reality, the attunement of the two worlds, the virtual and the real, and examines its effectiveness in teaching the phenomenon of fluid expansion. The main pillar of the educational process is teachers and the practices they use in the teaching process. For this reason, the sample of this survey consisted of 54 University students and prospective elementary education teachers. The mixed research approach was followed to collect the data. Through a Mixed Reality environment, using HoloLens 2, students followed a well-structured scenario and worksheets and observations to investigate the phenomenon of expansion/contraction of different fluids. The results demonstrate that through the interaction and direct feedback of the Mixed Reality environment, students gained a deeper understanding of the phenomenon. At the same time, the device was characterized as a particularly useful educational tool that should be accessible to all students for a better familiarization with complex scientific data.