DIGIREAL – DIGITAL REALITIES FOR SMART INDUSTRIES

In the DigiReal, Digital Realities (DR) for Smart Industries, Breda University of Applied Sciences (BUas)
discussed and developed a Research agenda on the emerging developments of immersive technologies,
such as Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), but also Data management (Digital Twins) and
Artificial Intelligence (AI). The interest in immersive technologies applications is growing massively,
accelerated by the worldwide restrictions on Covid-19, but also brought critical questions and fundamental
innovation challenges to the surface.
To address these questions BUas elaborated internal alignment and awareness through 14 lunch meetings,
invested in research infrastructure (hardware, software and orgware) and participated in relevant ecosystems.
As a result, BUas research agenda looks beyond the diversity and variety of individual use-cases discussing:
how do we create, use and experience Digital Realities sensibly, meaningfully, and responsibly?
Although BUas is divided in sectoral domains the general research questions are quite generic:
1. Concepts and Theories: what are DR? How they can be conceptualized and studied cross-sectoral?
2. Design and Engineering: how are DR designed? How can they benefit from common approaches
and smart tools?
3. Use case and user interaction: How can we effectively and efficiently generate highly naturalistic
interaction in DR between a person and another person (real human), or with a digital
representation of a human, with digital world objects, in a virtual world scene that may be part of a
complex system (city, ocean)?
4. Measurement and evaluation: How do we observe interaction in DR? How does the interaction
compare to real-life events?
5. Ethics and societal impact: How do DR contribute to learning or inter-organizational and system
performance, and how can this be measured?
Next step is, as part of an approved DigiRealXL program (2022 – 2025), to gradually build up Field Labs and
interconnect them via the shared R&D agenda and R&D Infrastructure

The IMPULS-2020 project DIGIREAL (BUas, 2021) aims to significantly strengthen BUAS’ Research and Development (R&D) on Digital Realities for the benefit of innovation in our sectoral industries. The project will furthermore help BUas to position itself in the emerging innovation ecosystems on Human Interaction, AI and Interactive Technologies. The pandemic has had a tremendous negative impact on BUas industrial sectors of research: Tourism, Leisure and Events, Hospitality and Facility, Built Environment and Logistics. Our partner industries are in great need of innovative responses to the crises. Data, AI combined with Interactive and Immersive Technologies (Games, VR/AR) can provide a partial solution, in line with the key-enabling technologies of the Smart Industry agenda. DIGIREAL builds upon our well-established expertise and capacity in entertainment and serious games and digital media (VR/AR). It furthermore strengthens our initial plans to venture into Data and Applied AI. Digital Realities offer great opportunities for sectoral industry research and innovation, such as experience measurement in Leisure and Hospitality, data-driven decision-making for (sustainable) tourism, geo-data simulations for Logistics and Digital Twins for Spatial Planning. Although BUas already has successful R&D projects in these areas, the synergy can and should significantly be improved. We propose a coherent one-year Impuls funded package to develop (in 2021): 1. A multi-year R&D program on Digital Realities, that leads to, 2. Strategic R&D proposals, in particular a SPRONG/sleuteltechnologie proposal; 3. Partnerships in the regional and national innovation ecosystem, in particular Mind Labs and Data Development Lab (DDL); 4. A shared Digital Realities Lab infrastructure, in particular hardware/software/peopleware for Augmented and Mixed Reality; 5. Leadership, support and operational capacity to achieve and support the above. The proposal presents a work program and management structure, with external partners in an advisory role.