2. Enabling virtual worlds and augmented interaction in high-impact applications to support the realisation of Industry 5.0
Background and scope:
As recognised in the Communication on “An EU initiative on Web 4.0 and virtual worlds: a head start in the next technological transition”86, virtual worlds will be an important aspect of Europe’s Digital Decade and will impact the way businesses operate, innovate, produce and interact with customers. This Challenge aims at enabling the use of high-fidelity virtual worlds in high-impact markets and applications promoting Industry 5.0 principles of sustainability, human-centric, and resilience by scaling up cutting-edge innovations for platforms, middleware, tools, and devices.
Although virtual worlds are not a new concept, they have only recently started to become feasible. They owe their technical, economic, and social viability to the maturity of a range of enablers, such as the underlying technology building blocks and the connectivity infrastructure. However, the existing technological advances and cutting-edge innovations need to be scaled-up for a mainstream adoption of virtual worlds in industry. This requires implementing a human-centric approach in the technology design and deployment, based on partnerships with industry, involvement of end-users, such as workers or customers, and cross-sector cooperation.
In addition, this Challenge aims to orient the application of the solutions developed with virtual worlds technologies to Industry 5.0 Challenges, which are pressuring industry in a complex global economic, ecological and social context. The Challenge would thus fund solutions responding to industry needs for upskilled talent, resource efficiencyandcosteffectiveness,aswellaslowercarbonemissions. Suchapproaches are necessary to ensure that both industry and society reap the benefits of the technologies to the fullest potential by, for example, lowering their cost, applying their use to sustainability or industry resilience challenges, to enhancing collaboration in work environments and workers’ learning, or improving ergonomics.
Specific objectives:
The specific objective of the Challenge is to support the development and deployment of advanced virtual worlds technology solutions for industry which are human centric, sustainable, and resilient in their design and / or user contexts. The introduction to the market of innovations in the following areas and their scale up in exploiting new market opportunities is encouraged:
▪ Artificial Intelligence, e.g., for intelligent human-centric agents that interact with users, to create and script adaptive virtual worlds and interaction scenarios, and to provide more intuitive and accessible immersive experiences in dynamic Industry 5.0 application contexts: innovation management or operations management, such as collaborative worker platforms, rapid waste- less prototyping in virtual labs, knowledge valorisation across different teams, as well as remote working in challenging environments.
▪ Distributed ledger technology, e.g., for enabling secure and transparent transactions and for facilitating the management of digital assets in and across virtual worlds or in relation to linked physical assets in industrial applications, for instance in order to support adoption of technology applications for multi - site Industry 5.0.
▪ Spatial computing and location mapping, e.g., for spatially aware virtual worlds applications through accurate positioning of objects and users, realistic physics simulations, or for virtual world experiences closely tied to industrial physical locations and spaces.
▪ Digital twins for resilient and safer transport technologies and sustainable urban mobility systems. Digital twins can also help to optimise performance and decision-making in industrial contexts, including the development of sensors and sensor fusion analysis.
▪ Wearables, smart textiles and smart objects to complement and enrich users’ interactions through virtual worlds, e.g., for realistic, immersive or embodied experiences and interactions with improved ergonomics and cost-effective enabling applications contributing to Industry 5.0 goals.
▪ Development of AR/VR solutions for worker augmentation and learning, for remote expert assistance& development management, including for skills training or customer onboarding in industrial applications.
Expected outcomes and impacts:
Proposals are expected to aim at a sufficient integration of high -risk innovations with state-of-the-art building blocks (proprietary or not) towards compelling in-situ demonstration of clear added-value from using virtual worlds in high-impact markets, supporting the realisation of industry 5.0, with clear up-take in the market and scale up exploitation.
Expected outcomes of the innovations include:
▪ enabling skills upgrades, talent attraction, employee well-being and knowledge retention; and
▪ cost-effectiveness and resource efficiency for industryInteroperability between solutions is a key point for the free movement of users and tools between virtual worlds and avoids the phenomenon of gate keepers.
Specific conditions
The AI models developed and /or applied under this Challenge must comply with the EU concept for Trustworthy AI87 and the relevant ethical principles88 as well as the (draft) AI Act. In that respect, in addition to performance, due attention should be paid to data quality, transparency, privacy, and security. In addition, the AR/VR and AI tools should be developed and / or applied based on human-centricity principles. This European perspective should become a differentiating factor that brings a competitive advantage to these companies, as well as being an important element in de-risking future investments.
Budget 50 M€
XXXEIC Accelerator: https://eic.ec.europa.eu/eic-funding-opportunities/eic-pathfinder_en