Extended Reality (XR) holds the promise of revolutionizing learning, training, and work by breaking through physical constraints and facilitating global knowledge access. Despite existing technological challenges, XR is poised to transform industrial ecosystems, offering solutions to skill gaps, particularly highlighted by the European Commission’s “Pact for Skills” due to a shortage of skilled workers and a disinterest in industrial jobs.

Recognizing the strategic challenges is crucial for Europe to actively participate in this transformative wave. Lessons from the Web 2.0 revolution and the emergence of GAFA (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon) are informative to avoid repeating past errors and preventing Europe’s technological dependence. The Web 2.0 revolution, dominated by American companies and recently challenged by Chinese entrants, underscores the importance of content creation tools (social networks, no-code development environments, AI generative systems). These tools, accessible to the general public without extensive technical skills, have become indispensable in professional and social spheres.

Creation tools extend beyond technology, shaping work methods, knowledge representation, and cultural influence. Concerns arise with the democratization of XR applications, as Europe risks adopting non-European solutions without a proactive response. MOTIVATE XR addresses this challenge by providing an intuitive, cost-effective European solution for creating XR experiences in industrial operations.

MOTIVATE XR aims to develop a world-leading XR collaborative authoring, publishing, and experiencing tool suite. This open, integrated, interoperable solution targets a diverse user base, from major European industrials to non-programmers like handywomen/handymen. It streamlines workflows with end-to-end solutions, incorporating 3D scanning, digital twin modeling, No-Code authoring, and groundbreaking XR experiencing tools, including a next-gen European XR smart headset, all enhanced by AI.

The project plans five ambitious pilots across aerospace, home appliances, aluminum, electric distribution, and hybrid human-robot industries. Adopting a user-centric methodology coordinated by social sciences and humanities experts ensures proper consideration of societal, ethical, and legal aspects, aligning with the EC’s AI recommendations.

MOTIVATE XR not only enhances competitiveness, productivity, and efficiency of European XR content producers but also addresses EU’s strategic objectives, enhancing industry resilience through better training and assisting less-skilled individuals in complex tasks with multilingual XR support. An additional project objective involves enabling the home appliance industry to deliver XR experiences for public assembly and self-repair, contributing to waste reduction and creating new jobs for diverse categories of workers.

Goals to achieve:

• Goal 1: Co-design an XR and AI-based solution using a user-centric methodology and SSH-focused approach with a diverse range of industrial users for creating and experiencing training and assistance XR content; 
• Goal 2: Design and develop a solution exploiting the latest generative AI technologies for the automatic conversion of existing technical documentations into training and assistance XR experiences;
• Goal 3: Design and develop a ground-breaking authoring tool set enabling non-experts to collaboratively create maintenance training and assistance applications including from the field;
• Goal 4: Design and develop XR experiencing tools for training and assistance applications including from remote sites ;
• Goal 5: Integrate the MOTIVATE XR tools with a novel cybersecure back-end for sharing the XR applications created by the authoring tools (SO3/SO4);
• Goal 6: Organize user training and dedicated pilots in a set of complementary industrial pilots to evaluate the MOTIVATE XR tool suite;
•  Goal 7: Maximize the impact of MOTIVATE XR, facilitate take-up and synergies, and prepare market entry