Il progetto SERMAS – Socially accettable Extended Reality Models And Systems
Funding Entity: European Commission
Program: HORIZON.2.4 - Digital, Industry and Space (external website)
Topic: HORIZON-CL4-2021-HUMAN-01-13 - eXtended Reality Modelling (RIA) (external website)
Status: Completed
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Context
SERMAS is part of the HORIZON.2.4 - Digital, Industry and Space (external website) program, specifically in the HORIZON-CL4-2021-HUMAN-01-13 - eXtended Reality Modelling (RIA) (external website).
The pandemic further highlighted the importance of digitalization in all areas of our lives, from public services to healthcare, to education. This digital revolution must be sustainable and inclusive, granting the same rights to all citizens and ensuring that no one is left behind. Innovation and digitalization must meet the needs and characteristics of each individual and must be built around people taking into account a human-centric approach allowing users to gain access to information and services in a simple way and at the right time.
The current generations of static and dynamic virtual assistants and more generally the XR Systems (avatars, robots, cobots, augmented reality web-based solutions, etc.) fail to provide the truly Extended Reality (XR) experience that they were envisioned for.
The XR systems must be considered as socio-technical systems, of which better understand how the two components, the technical one (e.g., communication and control processes) and the social one (e.g., user interaction processes and user behavior), interoperate to achieve a truly XR experience.
The revolutionary opportunities opened by XR technologies will only materialize if concepts, techniques, and tools are provisioned to ensure the social acceptance of XR systems, defining it as the capability of a technology to be used in diverse social contexts (such as a post office or a newsroom office) in such a way that it does not make users feel uncomfortable or out of place. The user should be comfortable in interacting with the XR system and should perceive the interaction as pleasant, useful and understandable, thus leading to acceptance.
In other words, XR systems will truly be accepted, and thus become widely adopted, not if they “look or act like a human”, but rather if they behave in a way that humans find appropriate and understandable.
The lack of social acceptance is a barrier as it will lead all or some categories of users to refrain from using the technology, preventing them from accessing the services and information offered, and thus increasing social inequality rather than fulfilling the aims of the digital revolution. However, state-of-the-art models and technologies of XR systems are not up to the task of ensuring full-fledged social acceptance.
SERMAS will lay the foundations of next-generation XR systems, looking at social acceptance where it depends, both on the technology and on people who relate and interact with the technology. Will be developed innovative, formal and systematic, methodologies and technologies to model, develop, analyze, test and user-study socially acceptable XR systems.
Objectives
The goal of the project is to develop "disruptive" methodologies and tools, to simplify the design, development, implementation and management of eXtended Reality systems.
At the same time, the project will pay attention to the fundamental aspects to make these systems socially acceptable for end users, who will have to feel comfortable in interacting with the XR system.
The new models for XR systems will have the ability to adapt to a large variety of forms of expression, interaction, languages, domains, styles and intents and will allow the development of solutions capable of realizing an authentic human-like interaction capable of overcoming the mistrust and the limits in the interactions between human beings and machines.
The objective will be reached thanks to an approach that is both:
- inter-disciplinary, bringing together computer scientists, engineers and psychologists in order to provide the heterogeneous scientific expertise necessary to capture and reason about the social and technical components of XR systems;
- multi-sectorial, bringing together academic and industrial beneficiaries that are key players in the modeling, development, deployment, analysis and testing of XR systems.
The validity of the developed models and tools will be tested during the project through case studies applicable to real scenarios.
The role of Poste Italiane
Poste Italiane participates in the project by providing its technical skills for the development of methodologies, coordinating the implementation of the case studies and participating in the experimentation and validation of the created solutions.
Two of the three case studies envisaged by the project will be carried out by Poste Italiane for the experimentation of XR solutions in assistance services. Through tactile and vocal interactions, the Receptionist Agent will welcome visitors to the Poste Italiane headquarters with the aim of providing information and physical access services to the buildings. On the other hand, a Post Office Agent will be active in Post Offices, with user-friendly communication skills for providing information and offering services to users.
In this context, participation in the project has the objective of interest for Poste Italiane to experiment with new models of human-machine interaction.
Consortium Partners
The project coordinator is UNIMORE - UNIVERSITA DEGLI STUDI DI MODENA E REGGIO EMILIA, (Italy), in cooperation with the following partners:
| Technische Universitat Darmstadt (TUDa) | Germany |
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| Deutsche Welle (DW) | Germany |
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| F6s Network Ireland Limited (F6S) | Ireland |
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| Spindox Labs Srl (SPXL) | Italy |
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| King's College London (KCL) - coordinatore scientifico | United Kingdom |
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| Scuola Universitaria Professionale della Svizzera Italiana (SUPSI) | Switzerland |
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