GuestXR partners present two key project solutions in an impact workshop by the SECTG cluster

SECTG cluster impact workshop on project solutions

Project partners Anatole Lécuyer, Research Director and Head of the Hybrid Team from Inria, and Assaf Caftory, Researcher from the Advanced Reality Lab of Reichman University, participated in a collaboration impact workshop organised by the SECTG Cluster, an alliance of five European sister projects funded under the subtopic “Artificial Intelligence for extended social interaction”.

During the workshop, taking place on July 23rd and chaired by Orestis Georgiou from Ultraleap and Iria Loucaidou from CrowdHelix, they presented two technology project solutions boosted by the GuestXR project, that were selected amongst the top six innovations out of the 14 submissions received by different SECTG projects.

Anatole Lécuyer introduced a large set of haptic technologies that can be notably used in various social interaction contexts in VR. In particular, the devices comprise a haptic belt that can exert pressure on the abdomen (for instance to simulate anxiety or breathing), speech-to-touch vibratory feedback, or thermal actuators to simulate temperature feedback.

For its part, Assaf Caftory presented an Artificial Intelligence solution for controlling social scenarios in VR. This technology uses both reinforcement learning (RL) and large language models (LLMs) with the aim of optimising social behaviour in a multi-agent virtual environment.

During the workshop, other project solutions were presented by representatives from SECTG projects:

  • SONICOM (Lorenzo Picinali) – 3D Tune-In Toolkit and Binaural Rendering Toolbox.
  • SONICOM (Davide Fantini) – A Highly Parametrized Scattering Delay Network (SDN) Implementation for Interactive Room Auralization.
  • TOUCHLESS (Mateusz Kowalewski) – EmoSense: a multimodal ambient sensing platform.
  • CAROUSEL (Carmen Mac Williams) – Plantworld by Grassroots Arts.

The initiatives making up the SECTG cluster leverage human-centric and responsible Artificial Intelligence technologies to address issues such as social (mis-) trust, belief formation, the permeation of private and public spheres, social exclusion and divides.