European-based XR technology developers and content creators

The European Media and Immersion Lab (EMIL) consortium partners will support and guide the funded Financial Support for Third Parties (FSTP) projects towards their goals. FSTP funding is aimed at projects by outstanding technology developers, media innovators, SMEs, academia and others that enable new ways of creative storytelling and interaction through immersive media technologies.

The submissions must propose future-oriented eXtended Reality (XR) projects; i.e. using Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR), Mixed Reality (MR), or similar immersive and interactive technologies. These should propose a clear innovation in the field, whether at a technological level (bringing the technology up from TRL4 to TRL8) or at a content level (providing a novel type of experience with these technologies and media).

EMIL project invites proposals, especially for areas related to the core competencies of the consortium partners and the four Lighthouse projects that reflect the expertise and supporting infrastructure of EMIL. However, XR-project proposals that are not directly related to these four areas will also be considered. 

Wearable Haptic Interfaces for XR

Adding tactile sensations to XR has proved to enhance the immersive experience and has attracted tremendous attention from both academia and industry. EMIL develops smart garments (e.g., gloves and shirts) that combine vibrotactile, electrotactile and potentially also chemical stimulations to implement various tactile sensations and integrate stimulations into textiles. We will open source the designs of our smart garments and will provide open APIs for (re)configuring and (re)activating tactile sensations. FSTP projects in this area are expected to focus on XR experience design utilizing the smart garments developed by EMIL or new designs of smart garments that provide different types of tactile sensations. In either case, the proposed designs are expected to be prototyped and evaluated through user tests. Each FSTP project is free to choose any type of XR applications for demonstration and is encouraged to demonstrate the interplay between tactile sensation and other sensory modalities.

Affective Exergaming in Virtual Environments

Virtual environments hold great promise in supporting users to be physically active. EMIL is developing technologies to enable gamified exercise (“exergames”) in an effective and motivating manner; e.g. allowing users to interact naturally in virtual environments by cycling on an exercycle or running and jumping on the spot. Besides physical activity, our technologies make it possible to measure how users feel (“affect”) and to adjust and optimise virtual environments accordingly. We demonstrate the value of these technologies in VR exergames for sports training and rehabilitation, optimising the user experience to be both physically engaging and emotionally motivating. Possible FSTP projects include VR experiences that engage users through physical activity; e.g. for sport, rehabilitation and entertainment, and affective VR experiences such as interactive narratives.

Group-oriented Spatial AR

The common and cost-effective type of AR experience, based on smartphones or tablets, is often difficult to adopt by users and is isolating, which breaks the group dynamics user experience (UX) of visitors in public spaces such as museums, culture centres, heritage sites, schools, etc. Headset-based AR is also considered to be isolating as well as high cost, lacks robustness, and presents hygiene issues that have become obvious during the pandemic. Moreover, both types of technologies force every participant to use/wear a device, which is often not possible (e.g. motor or cognitive disabilities) or not desirable (e.g. invasiveness), hence leading to non-inclusive and non-accessible experiences. We expect novel approaches to group-based AR experiences for public spaces that: keep the sense of group UX; do not force all users in a group to use a device; and allow a situated, shared, co-located experience. Proposals of such AR experiences for public spaces may take advantage of UPF’s novel World-as-Support paradigm and the device that makes it feasible, the AR Magic Lantern. The SDK will support the rapid prototyping of experiences for this platform and will allow the proposal of novel augmentation of content and meaning for contexts such as learning, digital tourism, heritage transfer to younger generations, storytelling, an increase of interest in historical knowledge, etc. Other proposals of AR technologies that foster group-oriented, co-located, and situated experiences will also be considered, as well as other application areas.

Narrative Immersive Media Productions including Location Based
Experiences (LBX)

A solid narrative structure builds the foundation for any successful media production. In this context, we are expecting FSTP proposals with a strong emphasis on Animation, Digital Actors, and Visual Effects including Virtual Production, Interactive Installations, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality, Mixed Reality, and Game formats utilizing the latest technological advancements to tell compelling stories. Running such productions is supported by an ecosystem of hard- and software tools to optimize workflows while preserving maximum creative freedom. The scalable LBX created within the EMIL project tells a compelling story by means of visual and physical immersion. LBX by nature is restricted to dedicated hardware and spatial constraints, therefore the experience is planned in different scales: individually seated, individually in a room-scale environment, and as a group experience in a large room-scale environment. LBX and existing toolsets are expected to foster and blossom FSTP projects with strong narrative elements in XR.

Open track

The open track is for the proposals for VR, AR or MR productions or development projects that do not fall into any of the four thematic areas mentioned above. We expect to see radically different approaches with innovative and surprising content productions, applications, and/or services of extended reality such as Virtual Productions utilizing the latest achievements in real-time graphics for VFX, character-centric applications including animated assistive services where believable facial animation of humanoids are essential, etc.

The funding is 100% funding. When starting the project it must be on the Readiness Level 4 (RL4) and at the end of its execution on RL8. This is the case for both Technology-oriented proposals, as well as for Content & Production-oriented proposals. (Please check sections below for further details). So in fact, for the projects, the total value of the funding is more than 100%.

The EMIL funding calls will be open to all legal entities located within an EU member state or in a Horizon Europe (HE) associated country and possessing a validated Participant Identification Code (PIC) granted by the European Commission (EC) will be required at the time of signature. The proposals should include a plan on how they can benefit from the expertise and/or infrastructure of EMIL lab nodes. Due to the complexities of the UK-EU research relationship, UK companies and other UK entities unfortunately are not eligible for funding.