VOXReality’s goal is to conduct research and develop new AI models to drive future XR interactive experiences, and to deliver these models to the wider European market. These new models will address human-to-human interaction in unidirectional (theatre) and bidirectional (conference) settings, as well as human-to-machine interaction by building the next generation of personal assistants.
VOXReality will develop large-scale self-supervised models that will be fine-tuned to specific downstream tasks with minimal re-training. At the same time, we will rely on modern training approaches for designing models that include subnetworks with a common
representation power but are more targeted towards specific architectures. By leveraging the once-model-for-all concept from the model training (large-scale self-supervision) and deployment (jointly learning sub-networks) perspective, we will be able to provide a catalogue of highly generic models with high representation capacity that will be efficiently specialized for downstream tasks.
In the VOXReality project, publicly available datasets will be used to develop, explore and train AI self-supervised models. Regarding the speech translation, bilingual sentence pairs and multilingual speech translation corpus will be extensively used to build robust end-to-end systems. Additional datasets will be collected and utilized for each pilot to fine-tune the self-supervised models.
Overall, the ambition of VOXReality is to extend vision-language models to simultaneously capture spatial and semantic relationships, a critical requirement for achieving next-generation language-driven XR, a technology which encompasses spatial understanding.
Our consortium has been carefully assembled to include the scientific and technological skills needed to address the challenges of the project and achieve the ambitious goals. It comprises 10 organizations from 5 different EU countries (Greece, Germany, Italy, Ireland and Netherlands).
VOXReality partners have been strategically selected to balance research, innovation and dissemination potential. Coordinated by MAG the team consists of one European Conference Organizer (VRDAYS), an acknowledged cultural theatre (AF), four innovative SMEs (SYN, HOLO, ADAPT, F6S), two combined language and vision
Research Partners (CERTH, UM) and social XR experts (NWO-I). The user partners of the consortium are companies providing solutions to virtual conferencing, cultural sector and industrial applications.
VOXReality’s Open Call is supported by F6S which has a wide network around business innovation, support and community building. VOXReality will be supporting the third-party contributions from a technical (SYN) and networking (F6S) point of view. Finally, acknowledging the importance of applying a user-centric design process, and more specifically for the collection of user requirements and the validation of the developed models, VOXReality has a dedicated partner with expertise in this domain (NWO-I).
Maggioli S.p.A, founded in 1905, is a leading Italian company offering a broad range of specific, highly professional solutions in business areas: i) Information Technology, ii) Professional Services, iii) Publishing, Training and Education, iv) Document Management, and v) Museums, Art and Culture. Maggioli is one of the biggest ICT integrators in Italy. An important characteristic of the company is the widespread presence with a highly qualified commercial and consulting network in Italy, Spain, Greece, Belgium and Latin America, consisting of 70 offices, 140,000 clients and 25,000 active software installations. Maggioli was ranked 7th in the list of the TOP 100 Data Manager IT Software and Service Companies in 2020 and 2021.
F6S is a leading global founder and startup network that helps public sector entities around the world to promote, communicate and disseminate technical and research projects. F6S stands for F-ounder-S. Our mission is to help founders and startups grow to solve the world’s pressing social, economic, environmental, sustainability and innovation problems. In addition to F6S’ work with governmental entities, we also work with corporates, investors, research institutions, programs, universities and others in the global startup ecosystem. F6S tools deliver company growth through grants, partnerships, funding, investment, pilot contracts, partnerships, jobs & talent recruitment, company services and more.
ADAPTIT offers premium quality services to telecommunication providers and successful solutions for enterprises. ADAPTIT’s unwavering focus on innovation and excellence has been a cornerstone of the company’s vision since its inception in 2005, thus emerging as a key player in the field. With a strong presence in numerous European countries, such as Spain, Sweden, Finland, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Malta, Bulgaria, Albania and Cyprus, ADAPTIT has consistently undertaken major projects on an international scale. ADAPTIT keeps setting higher goals for future development while remaining strongly committed to its corporate values: expertise trust, innovation, integrity.
CERTH is one of the largest research organizations in South-East Europe since its establishment in 2000. It facilitates a personnel of more than 1000 employees, under financing of more than 30M euro/year stemming primarily from international competitive grants. It conducts both applied and basic research, aiming to promote scientific knowledge and technological innovation. Its involvement in VOXReality regards research conduction and technology provision to the team. Specifically, it is the partner primarily responsible for the Vision-Language models that are being developed for the project, putting effort into making them spatially-aware, able to contribute “visual context” to the rest of the VOXReality tool-chain.
The Athens Epidaurus Festival is Greece’s leading cultural organisation and one of the oldest continuously running festivals in Europe. Spanning 70 years, the Festival has welcomed some of the greatest music, dance, and theatre artists of the international and local scene, in collaboration with the most prestigious Greek and international organisations, attracting large audiences from around the world.
Up until 2005, the Festival had been held exclusively at the Odeon of Herodes Atticus and the Ancient Theatre of Epidaurus. In the summer of 2006, five brand-new theatre stages were launched at the Peiraios 260 industrial venue which has since emerged as an important springboard for contemporary art. Artistic productions and site-specific performances are also presented at other venues in Attica and various locations as part of the Festival.
The VRDays Foundation is the organisation that builds Immersive Tech Week, together with its invaluable partners. We unite the XR community, inspire creative minds & drive business forward to make a positive difference for tomorrow. Facing the rapid growth of immersive technologies, we are committed to raise awareness and initiate actions combining creativity, fun and inspiration from all angles to advance successful and beneficial development of immersive technologies through a dynamic festival experience that integrates business, research, and art. We unite and empower individuals to shape the future, creating a better world through the fusion of technology and creativity.
Founded in 2015, Hololight has emerged as a global leader in augmented and virtual reality (XR) software for the enterprise market. By collaborating closely with technology, networking, cloud, software, and hardware partners, as well as industry organizations, Hololight has built a robust ecosystem. The company provides XR software, infrastructure, and streaming technology to visualize and manage industrial 3D data at scale, revolutionizing how companies engage with 3D content and scaling XR use. Hololight is a use case leader for the VOXReality Training Assistant, a project enhancing industrial assembly training through augmented reality and artificial intelligence. This includes the visualization and manipulation of 3D CAD files, an interactive virtual training aide with real-time performance evaluation, and a dynamic dialogue system powered by natural language processing and speech-to-text functionalities, addressing the limitations of conventional training methods by creating a more interactive and efficient training environment.
Maastricht University (UM) is the most international university in the Netherlands with over 22,000 students and more than 4,500 employees. The university distinguishes itself with its innovative education model, international character and multidisciplinary approach to research and education. Today, it is considered one of the best young universities in the world. The Faculty of Science and Engineering is one of the focal points of these developments. Within the Faculty of Science and Engineering, over 260 researchers and more than 2,700 students work on themes such as data science and artificial intelligence, circularity and sustainability, and fundamental physics. The Department of Advanced Computing Sciences (DACS) is Maastricht University’s largest and oldest department broadly covering the fields of artificial intelligence, data science, computer science, mathematics and robotics. The department’s research activities span the entire spectrum from curiosity-driven research to responsible societal applications, often taking on an interdisciplinary character. Contributions to areas such as natural language processing, multi-agent systems, (medical) signal and image processing, game theory, intelligent search techniques and affective computing are internationally recognized.
Synelixis Solutions S.A., founded in 2007, specializes in automation and system control solutions, expanding over the years into precision agriculture, IoT, security, energy efficiency, cloud computing, and more. With significant experience in international research programs, Synelixis leads in adopting and developing cutting-edge technologies. The company focuses on corporate software development, cloud services, custom hardware and software development, smart irrigation, and IoT-based smart city solutions. Additionally, it boasts expertise in big data, AI, blockchain technologies, smart contracts and XR applications. Recognized for its technology, reliability, and strategic international partnerships with major corporations and universities, Synelixis has established itself as a significant player in its field.
Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) is the Dutch national research institute for mathematics and computer science. It is a private, non-profit organization. CWI’s mission is twofold: to perform frontier research in mathematics and computer science, and to transfer new knowledge in these fields to society. Special efforts are made to make research results known to non-specialist circles, ranging from researchers in other disciplines to the public at large. CWI is also strongly embedded in Dutch university research: about twenty-five of its senior researchers hold part-time positions as professors at universities. CWI receives a basic funding from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO), amounting to about two third of the institute’s total income. The remaining third is obtained through national research programmes, international programmes, and contract research commissioned by industry. The group participating in VOXReality is the Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS). The DIS group focuses on facilitating and improving the way people use interactive systems and how people communicate with each other. It combines data science with a strong human-centered, empirical approach to understand the experience of users. This enables to design and develop next generation intelligent and empathic systems. The group bases the results on real-world testing grounds and data sets, and embrace areas such as ubiquitous computing, human-centered multimedia systems, and languages.
