The first phase of the THEIA-XR project has focused mainly on three parts, namely (a) establishing detailed use case specifications and requirements (b) interviews focusing on the transdisciplinary co-design process with end users of the targeted domains, which are snow-grooming, logistics and construction, and (c) first developments of eXtended Reality solutions. At the beginning of the project, it was mainly important to get a common understanding within the consortium and a clear understanding of what potential end-users are expecting from the project. The use cases have gathered many end users, that were involved in multiple workshops gathering information them, including their daily work routine and what kind of technologies that can imagine that can be supportive for them in the future. By M6, the first version of the use case specification was available, that provided the scientific and technical partners a much more detailed insight on how these machines work and what the difficulties are with handling these machines. Additionally, first requirements (functional, non-functional and technical) have been defined and are used as the basis for the technical developments performed mainly in WP3, WP4 and WP5. Based on this, the first developments of different XR methodologies was initiated, thereby focusing on collecting various data from the environment and the machines, especially to gather data that is not directly available. Additionally, investigations are ongoing on how to present this "unknown" data to the human operator. The focus here has been either on using industrial displays and investigating on displaying information in improved fashion, displaying information in front of the machines using lasers or projectors or applying haptic feedback to the human operators. Different approaches are being investigated by the different partners, working either directly with the machines or also demonstrating technologies first in a simulated environments, which are also part of the development process taking place within the project. Finally, during the technology developments and the interaction with the human operators, concepts of ethics and legal usage of data is taken into consideration.
Finally, the three use cases are working on the following aspects to be handled within the project:
Use Case 1 (Snow Grooming):
- Providing information to the human operator performing its task in various challenging environments (e.g. darkness, white-out)
- Information provision exploiting new technologies, going away from classical AR technologies using glasses.
Use Case 2 (Logistics, Reach Stacker)
- Remote operation of Reach Stackers providing information to operators that are not inside the machines
- Providing information about handling containers in different environmental conditions
Use Case 3 (Construction, Excavator)
- Informing human operator about environmental situations around the machine that are not visible to the human operator
- Displaying information in a non-intrusive way that will not influence the work of the operator
