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Will there only be one Metaverse in the future? Since October 2021, many virtual worlds suddenly called themselves “Metaverse”, but is that justified? What is the meaning behind the pervasive term Metaverse? How can it be approached from a pragmatic and research-oriented point of view, and maybe separated a bit from pure marketing? This paper tries to contextualise the term and thereby offer an orientation for readers from different industries. Based on a review of past and present activities, we will propose our own definition of the term Metaverse. This is applied to analyse different application scenarios before the paper continues with a general discussion. In a direct comparison, we will tabulate some worlds that already call themselves a Metaverse and check them against criteria from our own definition. In conclusion, we present relevant focal points for a potential future Metaverse resulting from this comparison.

Bridge inspectors work for the safety of our infrastructure and mobility. In regular intervals, they conduct structural inspections – a manual task with a long-lasting and firmly normed analogue tradition. In our collaborative research project, we developed Mixed Reality (MR) and Virtual Reality (VR) prototypes to support that work digitally. We propose a mixed analogue and digital workflow using Building Information Modeling (BIM) data that can be ready-to-hand for bridge inspectors during their work on-site at a bridge. In this paper, we describe the system and the evaluation results of our final MR demonstrator at a autobahn-bridge in Germany. We identified a need for a digital MR tool to support the bridge inspection in-situ. In general, this matches with the trend to bring the computer-supported office-work out into the real world. However, there are also challenges to consider, like lacking BIM data for existing bridges and structures, appropriate user-interfaces in this new application domain, or the need to adopt norms and guidelines for public tender. We argue to consider a user-centered design approach for future developments to best profit from the bridge inspectors’, as well as the MR- and CSCW-researchers expertise, and ultimately increase the acceptance of the developed information systems.

We present an Augmented Reality (AR) application intended for use in supermarkets, with the primary goal to bring fun and digital engagement through AR mini-games to the customers while shopping. We believe that our approach can be extended and scaled up by integrating mini-games into existing shopping apps in the future.

This paper presents the concept, a system-overview, and the evaluation of EnArgus, the central information system for energy research funding in Germany. Initiated by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi), EnArgus establishes a one-stop information system about all recent and ongoing energy research funding projects in Germany. Participants ranging from laypersons to experts were surveyed in three workshops to evaluate both the public and expert interfaces of the EnArgus system in comparison to peer systems. The results showed that the EnArgus system was predominantly evaluated positively by the various participants. It contributes to making the energy sector more transparent and offers clear advantages for professional use compared to similar systems. The system’s semantic processing enables more precise hits and better coverage by including semantically related terms in search results; its intelligence makes it fail-safe, rendering it suitable for areas where poor results can have dire consequences. Reporting on an actual real-world system, the paper also provides a roadmap-view of how electronic filing of administrative project data can be semantically enhanced and opened-up to provide the basis for new ways into the data that are key for future breakthrough AI interfaces.

Over the decades, technologies envisioned by pioneers such as Douglas Engelbart are becoming a reality. AI has become an important driver for technological progress, posing questions for the future of human-computer interaction. Our research group at Fraunhofer FIT looks back on a 51 year long research tradition that started with Engelbart’s vision and followed through the larger developments of HCI from the introduction of CSCW up to successful projects involving the engineering of large software systems in practice. In this paper, we outline the history of our institute against the background of trends in HCI, working out the cornerstones and “useful practices” from our research tradition towards our vision of the future of a human-centred AI/IA, with the expectation that this analysis may be useful for similar organisations. In doing so, we illustrate tensions between theory and application, humans and technology, and show how keeping those aspects in balance is an important challenge and chance for bringing disruptive emerging technologies successfully into practice.

The presented demonstrator showcases the potential of augmented reality (AR) smartglasses in the sterile supply chain. In the scope of the project "Smartglasses in der Sterilgutver-sorgung", we developed an application to investigate on the applicability of smartglasses and AR paradigms during the reprocessing of used operational tools. The demonstrator was developed and tested using the iterative user-centered approach involving actual employees of the respective domain.