Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise is participating in the SHARESPACE consortium to create XR-based Social Hybrid Spaces (SHS) to enhance hybrid and remote working.
Alcatel-Lucent and 14 other European partners comprise the SHARESPACE consortium, a €6 million initiative funded by the European Commission through the Horizon Europe research and innovation programme. The programme encompasses academics, industry and clinical experts in various disciplines, including AI, XR, mathematics, health psychology and cyberpsychology, cognitive neuroscience and movement science.
SHARESPACE aims to expand interaction in a virtual world using XR technology to enhance communication methods specific to participants' characteristics. Alcatel-Lucent namechecks future deployment possibilities in various sectors, including health, learning, entertainment, sport, and the workplace.
Sylvain Rivier, SHARESPACE coordinator for Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise, said:
We are delighted to take part in this amazing project that will put Extended Reality at European users’ fingertips. With SHARESPACE, we have developed open human-centric virtual worlds with new real-time remote interactions and capabilities into Rainbow’s collaborative space. The capability to integrate human-driven or full-virtual avatars will improve the performance of human-avatar and human-robot motor coordination in complex scenarios."
SHARESPACE intends to build SHSes shared by humans (wearing XR glasses and mocap technology) and their virtual avatars. Participants and avatars engage in collaborative tasks that model body movements and create user interactions.
SHSes capture social sensorimotor primitives (actions involving both sensory and motor functions or pathways) through mobile-connected sensors. The environment is then reconstructed using XR tech, where virtual avatars can engage in joint action, distance-based learning and socialising.
SHS Holds Diverse Practical Applications
Alcatel-Lucent's Rainbow CPaaS platform is tailored for the SHARESPACE project and enables participants to connect in real-time with any other person, device or application. Alcatel-Lucent describes the collaboration in its announcement as allowing "the onboarding of avatars as a new type of endpoint, enriching the remote collaborative experience".
Leading researchers and deep-tech companies with unique health, sport, and art expertise will develop three real-life scenarios during the initiative. SHARESPACE will subsequently provide logistical and technical preparation for these practical use cases with appropriate institutions.
One scenario involves Barcelona's Hospital Vall d'Hebron pain unit providing remote assistance to people suffering from chronic back pain. Public demonstrations will aim to engage users and communities using VR and AR and will be presented during the World Pain Conference in 2024 and 2025.
Another practical example is the "peloton cycling challenge". The ambition is to create new perspectives in sports training and sports entertainment. Deploying personal, autonomous, and semi-autonomous virtual avatars for optimised perceptual motor skills, cyclists can learn how to ride in a virtual peloton. This case will be demonstrated at the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris and the 2025 Tour de France.
