Collaborative Research: CCRI: New: CoMIC: A Collaborative Mobile Immersive Computing Research Infrastructure for Multi-user XR

协作研究：CCRI：新：CoMIC：用于多用户 XR 的协作移动沉浸式计算研究基础设施

• 批准号: 2235050
• 负责人: Amitabh Varshney
• 金额: $ 50万
• 依托单位: University of Maryland, College Park
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2023-05-15 至 2026-04-30
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2235050&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; CCRI; New; CoMIC

The last few years have witnessed the tremendous development of immersive technologies such as virtual, augmented, and mixed reality (VR, AR, and MR), which are often collectively referred to as extended reality (XR). While XR is deemed as the killer application of 5G and beyond, existing work has mainly focused on improving the quality of experience (QoE) for single-user scenarios, and there is limited research on exploring the underlying infrastructure to support emerging immersive applications, especially multi-user collaboration and interaction involving participants from geo-distributed locations. This project aims to design and develop the infrastructure for Collaborative Mobile Immersive Computing (CoMIC), which fills this critical gap and lays the technical foundation for realizing the grand vision of the Metaverse. The intellectual merit of CoMIC includes: (1) constructing a research infrastructure with both software and hardware components for advancing collaborative immersive computing and (2) serving the community by empowering innovative solutions of multi-user XR. CoMIC will develop a first-of-its-kind, open-accessible, and reconfigurable research infrastructure, which is naturally required by various use cases such as education, training, healthcare, and entertainment. It strives to offer a collaborative, visual-first, and hologram-based computing space and a QoE-driven, multi-site, and immersive communication framework by providing a shared environment for community users. CoMIC will be open to and support in-person visits of community users to facilitate their research projects. This project will create broader impacts on research infrastructure, education and training, societies, and economies, and broaden computing participation. Currently, the research and development of multi-user XR have been hindered because the underlying infrastructure with essential building blocks is still missing. CoMIC will timely bridge this critical gap and significantly speed up the realization of the Metaverse vision. The CoMIC platform offers a unique research opportunity for students and will be used to educate and train the next generation of researchers and engineers to master the key technologies and system design skills in immersive computing and advance the frontiers of science and engineering. This collaborative project brings together investigators from George Mason University and the University of Maryland to build the CoMIC infrastructure. Its remotely accessible and programmable robots mounted with XR devices and mmWave 5G edge networks can enable the comparison of different solutions in a consistent way. Users can download the CoMIC software to set up their own testbed, replace the CoMIC components in the reference implementation, and experiment with their own multi-user XR solutions. The website for this project is https://comic-xr.github.io/This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

在过去的几年中，见证了虚拟，增强和混合现实（VR，AR和MR）等沉浸式技术的巨大发展，这些技术通常被共同称为扩展现实（XR）。虽然XR被认为是5G及以后的杀手应用，但现有工作主要集中于提高单用户场景的体验质量（QOE），并且在探索基础架构以支持新兴的沉浸式应用程序，尤其是尤其是与地理位置的参与者有关的基础架构的基础架构的研究有限。该项目旨在设计和开发协作移动沉浸式计算（漫画）的基础架构，填补了这一关键差距，并为实现元视野的宏伟愿景奠定了技术基础。漫画的智力优点包括：（1）使用软件和硬件组件构建研究基础架构，以推进协作沉浸式计算，以及（2）通过赋予多用户XR的创新解决方案来为社区提供服务。漫画将开发出首个，开放式和可重新配置的研究基础设施，这是各种用例（例如教育，培训，医疗保健和娱乐）所要求的。它努力通过为社区用户提供共享环境，提供基于全息图的计算空间，以及以QOE为基础的，多站点和沉浸式通信框架的协作性计算空间。漫画将开放并支持社区用户的面对面访问，以促进其研究项目。该项目将对研究基础设施，教育和培训，社会和经济产生更广泛的影响，并扩大计算参与。当前，多用户XR的研发受到阻碍，因为仍然缺少具有基本构件的基础基础架构。漫画将及时弥合这一关键差距，并显着加快元视觉的实现。漫画平台为学生提供了独特的研究机会，并将用于教育和培训下一代研究人员和工程师，以掌握沉浸式计算中的关键技术和系统设计技能，并推进科学和工程学的前沿。这个合作项目汇集了乔治·梅森大学和马里兰大学的调查人员，以建立漫画基础设施。它的远程可访问和可编程的机器人安装在XR设备和MMWave 5G边缘网络上，可以以一致的方式比较不同的解决方案。用户可以下载漫画软件以设置自己的测试床，替换参考实现中的漫画组件，并尝试自己的多用户XR解决方案。该项目的网站是https://comic-xr.github.io/this Award反映了NSF的法定任务，并且使用基金会的知识分子优点和更广泛的影响审查标准，认为值得通过评估来获得支持。