Advances in Extended Reality for Smart Cities

A special issue of Future Internet (ISSN 1999-5903). This special issue belongs to the section "Techno-Social Smart Systems".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2024 | Viewed by 3425

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Faculty of Political Science and Sociopsychological Dynamics, Università degli Studi Internazionali di Roma, Via Cristoforo Colombo 200, 00147 Rome, Italy
Interests: UX; interaction design; learning experience design; mobile applications; smart community; smart city; robotics; IoT; AI; AR
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Guest Editor
Computer Science and Engineering Department, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Leganés, 28911 Madrid, Spain
Interests: AI; smart city; AR/VR; immersive and visual analytics; semantic visualizations

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Extended reality (XR) is sewn increasingly into the everyday fabric of human life. The application fields range from entertainment to more advanced fields such as military, healthcare, surgical, educational, and cultural. Despite a large amount of literature, there are areas where XR is not sufficiently explored or still lacks practical applications such as smart cities.

Solutions developed in the area of smart cities adopt information and communication technologies to facilitate the connection of people among each other and with a wide variety of city services including healthcare, transportation, and infrastructures. The main goal is to improve the quality of life for citizens, create a common conscience and promote more sustainable and efficient economic growth.

In this field, XR can play a crucial role by creating ad hoc interfaces to connect citizens with their urban environment, and to foster civic participation making it easier to access city services, understand open data, learn about the historical and social context, helping city operators to collaborate and plan in an easier way even among distances.

Contributions to this Special Issue are expected to push the boundaries of extended reality in smart cities, exploring how it can improve citizens’ quality of life, gradually engage them in the surrounding space, foster civic participation and facilitate any operations in a smart city.

Areas of interest, which can take advantage of the combination of the smart city approach and XR, include (but are not limited) to the following:

  • Urban planning
  • Urban stimuli
  • Social interactions
  • Urban experience
  • Urban transportation
  • Civic participation
  • Cultural heritage
  • Technology Enhanced Learning
  • Smart learning
  • Smart campus
  • Smart building
  • Ambient intelligence
  • IOT and environment interaction
  • Emergency management systems
  • City Security Management systems
  • Smart farms and industries
  • Health care
  • Urban sustainability
  • Playable cities

Dr. Marco Romano
Dr. Teresa Onorati
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • augmented reality
  • virtual reality
  • mixed reality
  • augmented virtuality
  • extended reality
  • smart city
  • civic engagement
  • urban planning
  • citizen experience
  • urban sustainability
  • citizen participation
  • playable cities
  • learning experience design
  • education

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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23 pages, 18705 KiB  
Article
Indoor Infrastructure Maintenance Framework Using Networked Sensors, Robots, and Augmented Reality Human Interface
by Alireza Fath, Nicholas Hanna, Yi Liu, Scott Tanch, Tian Xia and Dryver Huston
Future Internet 2024, 16(5), 170; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi16050170 - 15 May 2024
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1224
Abstract
Sensing and cognition by homeowners and technicians for home maintenance are prime examples of human–building interaction. Damage, decay, and pest infestation present signals that humans interpret and then act upon to remedy and mitigate. The maintenance cognition process has direct effects on sustainability [...] Read more.
Sensing and cognition by homeowners and technicians for home maintenance are prime examples of human–building interaction. Damage, decay, and pest infestation present signals that humans interpret and then act upon to remedy and mitigate. The maintenance cognition process has direct effects on sustainability and economic vitality, as well as the health and well-being of building occupants. While home maintenance practices date back to antiquity, they readily submit to augmentation and improvement with modern technologies. This paper describes the use of networked smart technologies embedded with machine learning (ML) and presented in electronic formats to better inform homeowners and occupants about safety and maintenance issues, as well as recommend courses of remedial action. The demonstrated technologies include robotic sensing in confined areas, LiDAR scans of structural shape and deformation, moisture and gas sensing, water leak detection, network embedded ML, and augmented reality interfaces with multi-user teaming capabilities. The sensor information passes through a private local dynamic network to processors with neural network pattern recognition capabilities to abstract the information, which then feeds to humans through augmented reality and conventional smart device interfaces. This networked sensor system serves as a testbed and demonstrator for home maintenance technologies, for what can be termed Home Maintenance 4.0. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Extended Reality for Smart Cities)
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16 pages, 2410 KiB  
Systematic Review
Urban Green Spaces and Mental Well-Being: A Systematic Review of Studies Comparing Virtual Reality versus Real Nature
by Liyuan Liang, Like Gobeawan, Siu-Kit Lau, Ervine Shengwei Lin and Kai Keng Ang
Future Internet 2024, 16(6), 182; https://doi.org/10.3390/fi16060182 - 21 May 2024
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Abstract
Increasingly, urban planners are adopting virtual reality (VR) in designing urban green spaces (UGS) to visualize landscape designs in immersive 3D. However, the psychological effect of green spaces from the experience in VR may differ from the actual experience in the real world. [...] Read more.
Increasingly, urban planners are adopting virtual reality (VR) in designing urban green spaces (UGS) to visualize landscape designs in immersive 3D. However, the psychological effect of green spaces from the experience in VR may differ from the actual experience in the real world. In this paper, we systematically reviewed studies in the literature that conducted experiments to investigate the psychological benefits of nature in both VR and the real world to study nature in VR anchored to nature in the real world. We separated these studies based on the type of VR setup used, specifically, 360-degree video or 3D virtual environment, and established a framework of commonly used standard questionnaires used to measure the perceived mental states. The most common questionnaires include Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS), Perceived Restorativeness Scale (PRS), and Restoration Outcome Scale (ROS). Although the results from studies that used 360-degree video were less clear, results from studies that used 3D virtual environments provided evidence that virtual nature is comparable to real-world nature and thus showed promise that UGS designs in VR can transfer into real-world designs to yield similar physiological effects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Advances in Extended Reality for Smart Cities)
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