The Metaverse encompasses technologies related to the internet, virtual and augmented reality, and other domains toward smart interfaces that are hyper-connected, immersive, and engaging. However, Metaverse applications face inherent disconnects between virtual and physical components and interfaces. This work explores how an Extended Metaverse framework can be used to increase the seamless integration of interoperable agents between virtual and physical environments. It contributes an early theory and practice toward the synthesis of virtual and physical smart environments anticipating future designs and their potential for connected experiences.
The internet-of-things (IoT) refers to the growing number of embedded interconnected devices within everyday ubiquitous objects and environments, especially their networks, edge controllers, data gathering and management, sharing, and contextual analysis capabilities. However, the IoT suffers from inherent limitations in terms of human-computer interaction. In this landscape, there is a need for interfaces that have the potential to translate the IoT more solidly into the foreground of everyday smart environments, where its users are multimodal, multifaceted, and where new forms of presentation, adaptation, and immersion are essential. This work highlights the synergetic opportunities for both IoT and XR to converge toward hybrid XR objects with strong real-world connectivity, and IoT objects with rich XR interfaces. The paper contributes i) an understanding of this multi-disciplinary domain XR-IoT (XRI); ii) a theoretical perspective on how to design XRI agents based on the literature; iii) a system design architectural framework for XRI smart environment development; and iv) an early discussion of this process. It is hoped that this research enables future researchers in both communities to better understand and deploy hybrid smart XRI environments.
The internet-of-things (IoT) refers to the growing field of interconnected pervasive computing devices and the networking that supports smart, embedded applications. The IoT has multiple human-computer interaction challenges due to its many formats and interlinked components, and central to these is the need to provide sensory information and situational context pertaining to users in a more human-friendly, easily understandable format. This work addresses this by applying mixed reality toward expressing the underlying behaviors and states internal to IoT devices and IoT-enabled objects. It extends the authors' previous research on IoT Avatars (mixed reality character representations of physical IoT devices), presenting a new head-mounted display framework and interconnection architecture. This contributes i) an exploration of mixed reality for smart spaces, ii) an approach toward expressive avatar behaviors using fuzzy inference, and iii) an early functional prototype of a hybrid physical and mixed reality IoT-enabled object. This approach is a step toward new information presentation, interaction, and engagement capabilities for smart devices and environments.
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