Since the popularisation of the Internet in the 1990s, the cyberspace has kept evolving. We have created various computer-mediated virtual environments including social networks, video conferencing, virtual 3D worlds (e.g., VR Chat), augmented reality applications (e.g., Pokemon Go), and Non-Fungible Token Games (e.g., Upland). Such virtual environments, albeit non-perpetual and unconnected, have bought us various degrees of digital transformation. The term `metaverse' has been coined to further facilitate the digital transformation in every aspect of our physical lives. At the core of the metaverse stands the vision of an immersive Internet as a gigantic, unified, persistent, and shared realm. While the metaverse may seem futuristic, catalysed by emerging technologies such as Extended Reality, 5G, and Artificial Intelligence, the digital `big bang' of our cyberspace is not far away. This survey paper presents the first effort to offer a comprehensive framework that examines the latest metaverse development under the dimensions of state-of-the-art technologies and metaverse ecosystems, and illustrates the possibility of the digital `big bang'. First, technologies are the enablers that drive the transition from the current Internet to the metaverse. We thus examine eight enabling technologies rigorously - Extended Reality, User Interactivity (Human-Computer Interaction), Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Computer Vision, IoT and Robotics, Edge and Cloud computing, and Future Mobile Networks. In terms of applications, the metaverse ecosystem allows human users to live and play within a self-sustaining, persistent, and shared realm. Therefore, we discuss six user-centric factors -- Avatar, Content Creation, Virtual Economy, Social Acceptability, Security and Privacy, and Trust and Accountability. Finally, we propose a concrete research agenda for the development of the metaverse.

All One Needs to Know about Metaverse: A Complete Survey on Technological Singularity, Virtual Ecosystem, and Research Agenda

https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/preview/5974350/1-s2.0-S1474034620300914-main.pdf

A research agenda for augmented and virtual reality in architecture, engineering and construction

The 4th industrial revolution (Industry 4.0, I4.0) is based upon the penetration of many new technologies to the industrial world. These technologies are posed to fundamentally change assembly lines around the world. Assembly systems transformed by I4.0 technology integration are referred to here as Assembly 4.0 (A4.0). While most I4.0 new technologies are known, and their integration into shop floors is ongoing or imminent, there is a gap between this knowledge and understanding the form and the impact of their full implementation in assembly systems. The path from the new technological abilities to improved productivity and profitability has not been well understood and has some missing parts. This paper strives to close a significant part of this gap by creating a road map to understand and explore the impact of typical I4.0 new technologies on A4.0 systems. In particular, the paper explores three impact levels: strategic, tactical, and operational. On the strategic level, we explore aspects related to the design of the product, process, and the assembly system. Additionally, the paper elaborates on likely changes in assembly design aspects, due to the flexibility and capabilities that these new technologies will bring. Strategic design also deals with planning and realizing the potential of interactions between sub-assembly lines, kitting lines, and the main assembly lines. On the tactical level, we explore the impact of policies and methodologies in planning assembly lines. Finally, on the operational level, we explore how these new capabilities may affect part routing and scheduling including cases of disruptions and machine failures. We qualitatively assess the impact on performance in terms of overall flow time and ability to handle a wide variety of end products. We point out the cases where clear performance improvement is expected due to the integration of the new technologies. We conclude by identifying research opportunities and challenges for advanced assembly systems.

Assembly systems in Industry 4.0 era: a road map to understand Assembly 4.0

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) are two technological breakthroughs that stimulate reality perception. Both have been applied in tourism contexts to improve tourists’ experience. This paper aims to frame both AR and VR developments during the past 15 years from a scientific perspective.,This study adopts a text mining and topic modelling approach to analyse a total of 1,049 articles for VR and 406 for AR. The papers were selected from Scopus, with the title, abstract and keywords being extracted for the analysis. Formulated research hypotheses based on relevant publications are then evaluated to assess the current state of the broader scope of the large sets of literature.,Most of research using AR is based on mobile technology. Yet, wearable devices still show few publications, a gap that is expected to close in the near future. There is a lack of research adopting Big Data/machine learning approaches based on secondary data.,As both AR and VR technologies are becoming more mature, more applications to tourism emerge. Scholars need to keep pace and fill in the research gaps on both domains to move research forward.,研究目的 – VR和AR是两种提高人们现实感知的科技突破。二者均被运用到旅游场景中提高游客体验。本论文旨在建立一个模型来描述过去15年内AR和VR的发展轨迹。,本论文采用文本挖掘和主题建模方法来分析1049篇有关VR和406篇有关AR的文章。样本库采样于Scopus, 通过题目、摘要、和关键词来检索。根据检索结果, 本论文提出研究假设, 并且审视延展更大范围的相关文献。,本论文发现大多数AR文章都是以移动技术为本。然而, 可穿戴设备始终有很少的文章。因此, 文献缺口预计在不久的将来会得以补上。研究还发现, 基于二手数据而运用大数据/机器学习方法的文章少之又少。,关键词：虚拟现实、增强现实、文献分析、旅游业

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Analysing recent augmented and virtual reality developments in tourism

Recommender systems, cultural heritage applications, and the way forward

Museums are great places where visitors can see, hear, touch, feel and experience interesting things The visit is even better when visitors can select what they want to see and have ways to enhance their experience Many museums have a huge amount of collections and objects, selecting which ones to see is sometimes difficult A system that adapts on the fly to the user’s preferences, suggesting objects that he might want to see, paths he would like to follow in their visit, as well as the complementary information he needs about each object, will be of fundamental importance Smartphones, with their Apps are the best solution to help enhance the museum experience, nevertheless, most of the time they fail, because their user interface (UI) does not adapt to the user’s preferences This paper presents: (a) an initial framework for a museum application where augmented reality and gamification are connected with an adaptive UI, (b) an adaptive card implementation to realize the UI, and (c) an initial fast object recognition implementation for the markers used for the augmented reality

Adaptive Card Design UI Implementation for an Augmented Reality Museum Application

The application of the most recent technologies is fundamental to add value to tourism experiences, as well as in other economic sectors. Mobile Five Senses Augmented Reality (M5SAR) system is a mobile guide instrument for cultural, historical, and museum events. In order to realize the proclaimed five senses, the system has two main modules: a (i) mobile application which deals mainly with the senses of sight and hearing, using for that the mobile device camera to recognize and track on-the-fly (museum's) objects and give related information about them; and a (ii) portable device capable of enhancing the augmented reality (AR) experience to the full five senses through the stimulus of touch, taste, and smell, by associating itself to the users' smartphone or tablet. This paper briefly presents the system's architecture but, the main focus is on the analysis of the users' acceptance for this technology, namely the AR (software) application, and its integration with the (hardware) device to achieve the five senses AR. Results show that social influence, effort expectancy, and facilitating conditions are the key constructs that drive the users to accept and M5SAR's technology.

/pdf/mobile-five-senses-augmented-reality-system-technology-2a3nz5il13.pdf

Mobile Five Senses Augmented Reality System: Technology Acceptance Study

Visiting a museum should be an apprised experience However, for a part of the visitors, the experience can be disappointing in some aspect, either because of the vastness of the estate, leading to tiredness, or the inappropriateness of the presented objects for the consumer intentions A solution is to endorse different arrangements according with the visitors individuality, eg expertise, previous behavior and actions, identified preferences, or age M5SAR (Mobile Five Senses Augmented Reality System for Museums) project which aims at the development of an Augmented Reality system, consisting of a mobile application and a device/gadget, in order to explore the 5 human senses This paper explores a solution supported in association rules to recommend which object a user should see The method encloses other potentialities, also explored, such as the suggestion of which items to buy in the museums’ souvenir shops The recommender uses data acquired from the M5SAR user’s account (eg, expertise, seen objects, and bought objects) and from the mobile application usage (eg, objects explored) Some tests were made using data adapted from public datasets

An Object Visit Recommender Supported in Multiple Visitors and Museums

This paper presents a portable device capable of enhancing the augmented reality (AR) experience to the full five senses through the stimulus of touch, taste, and smell. While most of the existing solutions for this type of devices lack portability or fail to explore all the five senses at once, in this work we introduce a new portable device that adapts to the users’ smartphone or tablet to provide a full five senses experience. This is part of a mobile five senses augmented reality system for Museums (M5SAR) project, which aims at developing an AR system to be a guide in cultural and historical events and museums, complementing or replacing the traditional orientation given by a guide, by directional signs or maps, while enhancing the users’ experience adding by new senses to the museums’ objects. The proposed device communicates via Bluetooth with an App (out of the scope of this paper) and is responsible for generating the stimuli that reproduces three senses: touch, taste, and smell, while the senses of sight and hearing are already reproduced through the users’ smartphone or tablet, allowing to explore all the human senses. The proposed hardware is powered by a rechargeable battery, giving the module portability to be used during a visit to the museum. It uses a microcontroller for the core unit, which receives instructions from the mobile application, running on the user’s smart device, and acts respectively, activating the physical interfaces to deliver the five senses experience to the user.

Multisensorial Portable Device for Augmented Reality Experiences in Museums

The purpose of this work is to present a portable hardware device that can provide touch, taste and smell sensations to an augmented reality experience. The proposed hardware is part of a mobile five senses augmented reality system for Museums, to improve and augment, as much as possible, the visiting of a museum, i.e., see, ear, touch, feel and experience all its interesting objects. The existing solutions related to the augment of sensing experiences consist of big hardware systems and they are far from being portable. In this work, a new small and portable device is presented, to integrate and connect with the user’s smartphone to provide the complete five-sense experience. The implemented device adds to the complete augmented system, the touch, smell and taste experiences. Moreover, the device is flexible enough to adapt itself to different sizes of the user’s smartphone or tablet. It is powered by a rechargeable battery, which gives the module the ability to keep the system running during the visit of the museum. The core unit is a microcontroller, it receives instructions from the mobile application in the user’s smartphone and acts accordingly, controlling the remaining hardware of the portable device to deliver the five-sense experience to the user. The communication between the device and the mobile application is possible through wireless communication, using a Bluetooth interface. The communication with the remaining module, denoted here as physical interfaces, will be wired. Preliminary results of device’s first prototype are also presented in this paper.

João D. P. Sardo

Papers

Adaptive Card Design UI Implementation for an Augmented Reality Museum Application

Mobile Five Senses Augmented Reality System: Technology Acceptance Study

An Object Visit Recommender Supported in Multiple Visitors and Museums

Multisensorial Portable Device for Augmented Reality Experiences in Museums

Portable Device for Touch, Taste and Smell Sensations in Augmented Reality Experiences