HIGHLIGHTING LEADING EDGE RESEARCH IN THE ROLE THAT EXTENDED REALITY  CAN PLAY IN ROBOTICS 

Extended reality (XR) is a “catch-all” term, extending the representation of the real world to humans, to enhance their interaction with it through Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality. These topics intersect with robotics in important ways: (i) XR essentially requires the same spatial perception of the environment as a robotic agent interacting in a real-world environment; (ii) XR interfaces and robots utilize prior knowledge of how humans perceive, represent, and move through space for tasks, e.g., semantic scene understanding; and (iii) XR is a simulation environment for realistic physics-based interaction between elements, which can be exploited for robot learning. 

XR and Robotics draw on contributions from diverse fields, e.g., robot mechanisms, control, haptics, simulations and digital twins, HCI/HRI, AI/ML/DL, SLAM, neural interfaces, natural language and gesture understanding, user interface design, as well as cognitive psychology. 

This workshop brings together researchers from the XR and Robotics worlds, with the goal of discussing how XR helps address challenges in robotics through the theoretical and experimental bases of perception, cognition, and interaction behaviour in XR technologies, including environments design, data representation (virtual models, interaction physics, rendering, video, point-clouds, 3D reconstruction, ambient sensors), sensory substitution (tactile, auditory), natural gesture and intention understanding, real-time data transmission.