SUN

Introduction

In order to be more familiar with the developed technologies in the 3 real life scenarios (cases, pilots and scenarios) we have asked Paul about the key strategic objective, what SUN is about and why it is important. “The key strategic objective in addressing the social innovation challenges in this proposal fits in creating a more resilient, inclusive and democratic European society. ‘Sun’ aims to participate in addressing inequalities and providing high-quality health care, and empowering all citizens to act in the green and digital transitions. The proposal will provide an innovative social oriented approach where all the related technologies cope with the possibility for citizens to express themselves in a inclusive way through the use of advanced social cues interpreters, providing new methods for rehabilitation and empowerment of humans. “

What is it about

“Practically, the project will contribute to human-centred and ethical development of digital and industrial technologies, through a two-way engagement in: 1. the development of technologies, and 2. empowering of end-users and workers, supporting social innovation. Here, this will also include end-users from the very beginning through the co-creation of scenarios, and later on gathering their feedback through the pilots demonstrating new uses of XR in the field of industry (ameliorating safety and capability of workers), rehabilitation, and inclusive communication. SUN will consider from the conceptualisation of the proposed technologies aspects of user privacy and GDPR as well as the ethical challenges posed by AI biases. Moreover, the SUN platform will make use of blockchain technology and for the first time develop a threat taxonomy for XR. Large effort will be dedicated in the project to achieve increased inclusiveness, by supporting a human-centred approach to technology development that is aligned with European social and ethical values-as well as ‘sustainability’. “

Why is it important

“So here we come to the Why. Sun also supports achievement of the UN sustainable development goals (SDGs). It is a addressing 3 areas where Wellbeing and Health are the priority. Rehabilitation of injured people, enabling communication for people with disabilities and providing a safety improved working conditions. VUB will be participating in the ‘benchmark of regulatory and ethical frameworks’ (ethical requirements in the SUN platform including the use of data; data protection including the GDPR; and evaluation of social/ethical responsibility, fundamental rights, data protection, privacy mapped to the project’s objectives.).VUB teams will be leading the ‘continuous compliance monitoring’ of the project performance against the requirements identified in the assessment. Thus, to safeguard that the work of the consortium stays compatible with the legislation. “

Aim

The Social and hUman ceNtered XR (SUN) project aims at investigating and developing extended reality (XR) solutions that integrate the physical and the virtual world in a convincing way, from a human and social perspective. The virtual world will be a means to augment the physical world with new opportunities for social and human interaction.

Methodology

We will address the following limitations:

• Lack of solutions to develop scalable and cost-effective new XR applications;
• Lack of convincing solutions for mixing of the virtual and physical environment;
• Lack of plausible and convincing human interaction interfaces in XR;
• Barriers due to resource limitations of end-user devices.

We will develop solutions to surpass current limitations, including:

• Development of scalable solutions to obtain plausible and convincing virtual copies of physical objects and environments;
• Development of solutions for a seamless and convincing interaction between the physical and the virtual world;
• Development of wearable sensors and haptic interfaces for convincing and natural interaction with the virtual environment;
• Development of artificial intelligence-based solutions to address current computing, memory, and network limitations of wearable devices.

Impact

The developed solution will be demonstrated in three real-life scenarios:

1 XR for rehabilitation after accidents or diseases.

2 XR in the industry to increase safety and improve social interaction among workers.

3 XR to remove interaction barriers for persons with disabilities.