Making A Real Connection:Pro-Social Collaborative Play in Extended Realities – Trends, Challenges and Potentials

Extended reality (XR) has emerged as new cutting-edge technology, encompassing augmented, virtual and mixed reality. Extended reality redefines and elevates the game user experience within immersive and blended environments and opens new horizons, not just for gaming but also for enhancing pro-social connections through collaborative play. This workshop is dedicated to charting the course of trends, identifying and dissecting challenges, and probing the potential inherent in pro-social collaborative play within extended realities. We invite researchers, designers, and practitioners to come together, offering a platform to showcase different approaches. The core objective is to foster the exchange of knowledge and rigorous research findings within this emerging field. By doing so, we aim to build a network and lay a robust foundation for the future implementation of collaborative play in extended reality, paving the way for its seamless integration into the scientific discourse and practice

Mobile Augmented Reality for Learning

Specht, M. (2012, April). Augmented Reality for Learning. Technical report for workshop at eLearning congress 2012. 's Hertogenbosch, The Netherlands.Until recently, augmented reality (AR) applications were mostly available for powerful workstations and high power personal computers. The introduction of augmented reality applications to smartphones enabled new and mobile AR experiences for everyday users. Because of the increasing pervasion of smartphones, AR is set to become a ubiquitous commodity for leisure and mobile learning. With this ubiquitous availability, mobile AR allows to devise and design innovative learning scenarios in real world settings. This carries much promise for enhanced learning experiences in situated learning. In the present article, we will look at different dimensions of mobile AR and exemplify their potential for education. At the end, we want to report on a short experiment that we conducted, called Locatory. It exceeds the current state of art for common mobile AR applications by introducing interactive and collaborative elements as well as gaming mechanisms

Musical peddy-paper: a collaborative learning activity suported by augmented reality

Gaming activities are an integral part of the human learning process, in particular for children. Game-based learning focuses on motivation and children's engagement towards learning. Educational game-based activities are becoming effective strategies to enhance the learning process. This paper presents an educational activity focusing to merge mobile computing devices and Augmented Reality, as a means to engage student in collaborative learning towards the Aesthetical Periods of Music History. The Musical Peddy-paper proposes student to use their mobile computing devices (smartphones/ tablets) to find eight stations scattered in a set location, and then use their music literacy skills to find the correct answer in each station. Collaborative work is required to find the stations and the answers to the clues. The musical Peddy-paper was developed mixing Geo-location and Augmented Reality concepts. Geo-location Points of Interest (POI’s) where set through Hoppala platform. Augmented Reality browsing and QRCode reading is supported by the LAYAR platform. In this paper, we introduce the concept of game-based activities as a tool to promote motivation and engagement towards learning, and fully explain the development process of the activity. We conclude this paper presenting the conclusions contemplating the use of this activity among a group of children from the 2nd Cycle of Basic Education in Basic School Maria Manuela de Sá, Matosinhos – Portugal.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Business Case and Technology Analysis for 5G Low Latency Applications

A large number of new consumer and industrial applications are likely to change the classic operator's business models and provide a wide range of new markets to enter. This article analyses the most relevant 5G use cases that require ultra-low latency, from both technical and business perspectives. Low latency services pose challenging requirements to the network, and to fulfill them operators need to invest in costly changes in their network. In this sense, it is not clear whether such investments are going to be amortized with these new business models. In light of this, specific applications and requirements are described and the potential market benefits for operators are analysed. Conclusions show that operators have clear opportunities to add value and position themselves strongly with the increasing number of services to be provided by 5G.Comment: 18 pages, 5 figure

Remote Real-Time Collaboration Platform enabled by the Capture, Digitisation and Transfer of Human-Workpiece Interactions

In this highly globalised manufacturing ecosystem, product design and verification activities, production and inspection processes, and technical support services are spread across global supply chains and customer networks. Therefore, a platform for global teams to collaborate with each other in real-time to perform complex tasks is highly desirable. This work investigates the design and development of a remote real-time collaboration platform by using human motion capture technology powered by infrared light based depth imaging sensors borrowed from the gaming industry. The unique functionality of the proposed platform is the sharing of physical contexts during a collaboration session by not only exchanging human actions but also the effects of those actions on the task environment. This enables teams to remotely work on a common task problem at the same time and also get immediate feedback from each other which is vital for collaborative design, inspection and verifications tasks in the factories of the future

Location-based technologies for learning

Emerging technologies for learning report - Article exploring location based technologies and their potential for educatio

Undercurrents – A Computer-Based Gameplay Tool to Support Tabletop Roleplaying

This paper introduces Undercurrents, a computer-based gameplay tool for providing additional communication and media streams during tabletop roleplaying sessions. Based upon a client-server architecture, the system is intended to unobtrusively support secret communication, timing of audio and visual presentations to game events, and real-time documentation of the game session. Potential end users have been involved in the development and the paper provides details on the full design process

Using Augmented Reality as a Medium to Assist Teaching in Higher Education

In this paper we describe the use of a high-level augmented reality (AR) interface for the construction of collaborative educational applications that can be used in practice to enhance current teaching methods. A combination of multimedia information including spatial three-dimensional models, images, textual information, video, animations and sound, can be superimposed in a student-friendly manner into the learning environment. In several case studies different learning scenarios have been carefully designed based on human-computer interaction principles so that meaningful virtual information is presented in an interactive and compelling way. Collaboration between the participants is achieved through use of a tangible AR interface that uses marker cards as well as an immersive AR environment which is based on software user interfaces (UIs) and hardware devices. The interactive AR interface has been piloted in the classroom at two UK universities in departments of Informatics and Information Science

Paper Gaming: Creating IoT Paper Interactions with Conductive Inks and Web-connectivity through EKKO

Paper is ubiquitous. It forms a substantial part of our everyday activities and interactions; ranging from our take-away coffee cups -- to wallpaper -- to rail tickets -- to board and card games. Imagine if you could connect paper to the Internet, interact and update it with additional data but without recourse to reprinting or using e-ink alternatives. This paper explores work examining conductive inks and web-connectivity of printed objects, which form part of an emergent sub-field within the Internet of Things (IoT) and paper. Our research is starting to explore a range of media uses, such as interactive newspapers, books, beer mats and now gaming environments through prototype IoT device named EKKO; a clip that allows conductive ink frameworks to detect human touch interaction revealing rich media content through a mobile application as the 'second screen'