Accessibility evaluation in built environments increasingly requires performance-based methods that capture dynamic user–environment interaction rather than static compliance with dimensional standards. Existing computational approaches, including BIM-based rule checking and path-finding analysis, are effective for geometric verification but cannot quantify the physical demands imposed on users during task execution. To date, no existing framework combines task-driven motion generation with quantitative biomechanical analysis specifically for accessibility evaluation in built environments. This paper presents a modular simulation framework that integrates procedural kinematic planning with inverse dynamics analysis to enable performance-based accessibility assessment. The system generates deterministic motion trajectories using a gait-based abstraction layer and inverse kinematics, then computes net joint forces and torques via a stabilized Newton–Euler recursive algorithm. External contact forces, including ground reactions during locomotion, are modeled through a dedicated force management subsystem. The framework is implemented in Unity and evaluated in three representative scenarios: level walking, stair ascent, and stair descent. Computed knee joint forces fall within magnitude and temporal ranges reported in the biomechanical literature (peak forces of 2.5–4.0 body weights for stairs and 1.5–2.0 body weights for level walking), indicating biomechanical plausibility rather than subject-specific experimental validation. The framework offers a reproducible, extensible foundation for evidence-based accessibility design, allowing designers to detect and quantify biomechanically demanding interactions in architectural environments prior to construction, and supporting a shift from prescriptive compliance toward dynamic, human-centered evaluation.

Renovation projects in construction play a critical role in improving existing buildings’ functionality, aesthetics, and sustainability but pose challenges like structural complexity and stakeholder coordination. This paper presents ExpertAssist, an Augmented Reality (AR) “On-the-Job” training and assistance toolkit designed to tackle these issues using advanced AR technology. ExpertAssist integrates applications for planning, monitoring, real-time communication, and workforce training. Key features include AR-based tutorials, real-time data sharing, and progress tracking, enhancing collaboration and efficiency in renovation projects.A pilot study indicated that participants using ExpertAssist completed tasks faster on average than those without AR, corresponding to a moderate effect size, although this difference did not reach statistical significance. User acceptance analysis, based on the UTAUT2 model, showed that performance expectancy, effort expectancy, social influence, and hedonic motivation were collectively associated with behavioral intention, accounting for 64% of the observed variance (R2=0.64, adjusted R2=0.59). These exploratory findings suggest the potential of ExpertAssist to support renovation practices through AR-enhanced training and collaboration.

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies have significantly progressed in recent years, revolutionizing a diverse set of industries, mainly the industrial metaverse in cultural heritage and the cultural and creative sectors. In the context of social manufacturing, there's a pronounced need for platforms that foster collaboration. This paper introduces a collaborative AR/VR platform for social manufacturing, emphasizing the need for a co-creation environment. This platform supports real-time customized fabrication of 3D objects through rapid manufacturing within an AR/VR-based collaborative framework, further enhancing shared awareness in social manufacturing endeavors. The platform provides a robust toolkit for AR/VR applications that enables real-time interaction with virtual entities and seamless integration with the backend databases of online marketplaces. Designed to be universally adaptable, the toolkit is indifferent to the type of database it interacts with, and can function on a wide range of platforms including Web VR, Mobile AR, and HoloLens AR. A use case involving a reference chair model demonstrates the toolkit's capabilities, highlighting its potential to transform experiences within AR/VR landscapes. By offering a seamless fusion of digital content within physical environments, this AR/VR toolkit signifies a considerable advancement towards the intersection of digital and physical realities, paving the way of immersive experiences.

The preservation and sharing of cultural heritage is a practice that not only connects us to our past but also enriches our present and future, fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation of the diverse narratives and histories that shape our world. Recent technological advancements have opened up new possibilities for this endeavor, allowing for preservation on a scale previously unimaginable. This study focuses on demonstrating the feasibility and effectiveness of these technologies by virtually recreating the Holy Monastery of Pantokrator, a significant heritage site in the monastic state of Mount Athos, Greece. The study involves the detailed 3D reconstruction with modern 3D image acquisition techniques such as photogrammetry and advanced 3D modeling. The interactive experience is facilitated through three modes: Desktop Mode (Screen, Keyboard, Mouse), Virtual Reality Headset Mode and 360° Video mode, catering to different user preferences and access to hardware. Our results indicate a high level of accuracy and detail in the virtual model, closely mirroring the actual site. This study contributes to the growing body of research exploring the application of VR in cultural heritage preservation and dissemination. The findings highlight the potential of VR to democratize access to cultural heritage assets, particularly those that may be difficult or impossible to visit in person.

Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) technologies have significantly progressed in recent years, revolutionizing a diverse set of industries, mainly the industrial metaverse in cultural heritage and the cultural and creative sectors. In the context of social manufacturing, there's a pronounced need for platforms that foster collaboration. This paper introduces a collaborative AR/VR platform for social manufacturing, emphasizing the need for a co-creation environment. This platform supports real-time customized fabrication of 3D objects through rapid manufacturing within an AR/VR-based collaborative framework, further enhancing shared awareness in social manufacturing endeavors. The platform provides a robust toolkit for AR/VR applications that enables real-time interaction with virtual entities and seamless integration with the backend databases of online marketplaces. Designed to be universally adaptable, the toolkit is indifferent to the type of database it interacts with, and can function on a wide range of platforms including Web VR, Mobile AR, and HoloLens AR. A use case involving a reference chair model demonstrates the toolkit's capabilities, highlighting its potential to transform experiences within AR/VR landscapes. By offering a seamless fusion of digital content within physical environments, this AR/VR toolkit signifies a considerable advancement towards the intersection of digital and physical realities, paving the way of immersive experiences.

The construction industry stands to greatly benefit from the technological advancements in deep learning and computer vision, which can automate time-consuming tasks such as quality control. In this paper, we introduce a framework that incorporates two advanced tools - the Visual Quality Control (VQC) tool and the Digital Twin visualization with Augmented Reality (DigiTAR) tool - to perform semi-automated visual quality control in the construction site during the execution phase of the project. The VQC tool is a backend service that detects potential defects on images captured on-site using the Mask R-CNN algorithm trained on annotated images of concrete and railway defects. The surveyor, aided by the Augmented Reality (AR) technology through the DigiTAR tool, can in-situ confirm/reject the detected defects and propose remedial actions. All the quality control results are recorded in the relevant BIM model and can be viewed on-site overlaid on the physical construction elements. This solution offers a semi-automated visual inspection that can speed up and simplify the quality control process, especially in case of large linear infrastructures, illustrating the added value of AR-based applications in Digital Twins

Virtual reality (VR) became, in the last few years, an important pillar for promoting cultural heritage (CH) through serious games or virtual guided tours. A lot of museums, institutes, and galleries tend to integrate new technologies like VR for promotion purposes. The major objective of this research is to analyze the Activator project through three immersive scenarios, developed in collaboration with the Center for Research and Technology Hellas (CERTH) and the “Noesis” Science Center and Technology Museum, and deal with three different regions of Ancient Greece. This study introduces the serious games VR platform Activator, whose purpose is to provide a realistic Query ID="Q2" Text="Article title: Kindly provide German article." VR experience coupled with a motion platform, to highlight a few significant moments of the ancient Greek civilization and let the user interact with key objects through a set of serious games in virtual environments. In particular, three immersive educational scenarios are implemented in the form of serious games, including the Siege of Rhodes, the Antikythera Wreck, and the First Settlement of Europe, which represents the volcanic eruption at Thera (Santorini). In addition to the implementation details and technologies utilized, the paper presents some preliminary evaluation results with real users, during its initial pilot phase that is currently carried out at the premises of the Noesis Science Center & Technology Museum, in Thessaloniki, Greece. The Activator platform, which has been developed in the context of a collaborative Greek national research project, will be available for public use after the end of the project.

Remote working and collaboration is important towards helping workplaces to become flexible and productive. The significance of remote working has also been highlighted in the COVID-19 pandemic period in which mobility restrictions were enforced. This paper presents the development of an augmented reality platform, aiming to assist workers in remote collaboration and training. The platform consists of two communicating apps intended to be used by a remote supervisor (located e.g., at home) and an on-site worker, and uses intuitive digital annotations that enrich the physical environment of the workplace, thereby facilitating the execution of on-site tasks. The proposed platform was used and evaluated in user trials, demonstrating its usefulness and virtue by assessing its performance, worker satisfaction and task completion time.

As autonomous collaborative robots are more widely used in work environments alongside humans it is of great importance to facilitate the communication between people and robotic systems, in a way that promotes safety and productivity. To this end, we propose an Augmented Reality (AR) based system that allows workers in a human-robot collaborative environment to interact with a robot while also receiving information regarding the robot state and plans that relate to the human’s safety and trust, such as the intended movement of the robotic arm or the navigation plan of the mobile platform. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system we conducted experiments with 13 participants, where two users had to work in the same workspace while being assisted by a mobile manipulator. We measured the task completion time as well as the robot idle time using our AR-based human-robot interaction system and compared them to a conventional setup without the use of augmented reality. Additional, subjective evaluations related to user satisfaction, system usability, perceived safety and trust showed that users assessed the system in a positive way and preferred AR visualization over more traditional interfaces.

Nowadays a lot of people working in industrial environments face daily routines as boring and dull which disaffects them from each other. Thus, the evolution of online communities has given a great opportunity in communication and interaction between people that work in the same environment but may not have direct interaction. An online Social Collaboration platform introduced to industrial environment enhances interaction between colleagues and empowers bonding by creating a social community where participants can share concerns, ideas and knowledge. Moreover, when introducing a new idea to a workplace, like Social Collaboration platform, it is expected to have both positive and negative reactions so it is challenging to create an attractive environment and engage as many individuals as possible. For this reason a gamification strategy can be used which is proven to appeal to the majority of people when applied with appropriate strategy. The gamified social collaboration platform that is introduced in this paper supports engagement of employees in to their daily jobs by triggering motivation and offering only positive feedback. The objective of the proposed concept is the creation of a pleasant and friendly environment in industrial premises where employees have the need to participate in collective activities and improve team spirit. A complete social collaboration tool with gamified actions is presented which is deployed in a plant floor at CERTH/CPERI and tested on real conditions during 3 months. The analysis of the user's engagement is promising and showed that the platform was successfully introduced at daily procedures and interactions using the gamified actions. Moreover, an overall enhancement of positive mood between colleagues is noticed along with engagement and satisfaction. This novel social platform proves that there is a necessity for change in industries by boosting human contact and eliminating alienation. Fortunately, with the right use of technology, this necessity can be satisfied and the whole procedure of communication, engagement and knowledge exchange is facilitated.

This paper presents a gamified framework designed to offer behavioural change support and treatment adherence services to people living with Dementia (PLWD), their caregivers and medical/social professionals. A flexible and scalable ICT solution architecture was proposed to support highly personalized and gamified services for all groups involved: cognitive skills training and independent living for PLWD, training and support for caregivers and high clinical and social services for professionals. The outcomes of this approach are delivered through a set of gamification concepts running in parallel to create motivation for user commitment and for achieving the desired behavioral change. After projecting all user group expectations on a social game canvas, the impact evaluation will assess the intended effects of the proposed gamification approach on the welfare on PLWD and their caregivers.

Supporting the use of technology into industrial environments is an issue of mass appeal within the Industry 4.0 initiative, with a lot of promising research especially into interaction, production and training sections. In this paper, a Social Collaboration platform is introduced which creates an online community for workers as well as an Augmented Reality (AR) tool for production and training purposes both of which constitute gamified applications on which a customizable Gamification platform is applied according to impending needs. These tools have been implemented in order to become of daily use to employees in factories and incentivize them to promote collaboration, engagement, participation and work satisfaction. Every promoted industrial behavior can be described and awarded based on the offered rule engine. Thus, two gamified processes are offered regarding Social Collaboration and AR training to employees of industrial environments, so that an inference is drawn concerning participation, satisfaction and self-fulfillment. The use of the platforms is illustrated in this paper by two examples consisting one use case for a section in social collaboration and a second use case of training through AR.

One of the core tasks in order to perform fast and accurate retrieval results in a content-based search and retrieval 3D system is to determine an efficient and effective method for matching similarities between the 3D models. In this paper the “cascaded fusion of local descriptors” is proposed for efficient retrieval of classified 3D models, based on a 2D coloured logo retrieval methodological approach, suitably modified for the purpose of 3D search and retrieval tasks that are widely used in the augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) fields. Initially, features from Key points are extracted using different state of the art local descriptor algorithms and then they are joined to constitute the feature tuple for the respective key point. Additionally, a feature vocabulary for each descriptor is created that maps those tuples to the respective vocabularies using distance functions that applied among the newly created tuples of each Point Cloud. Subsequently, an inverted index table is formed that maps the 3D models to each tuple respectively. Therefore, for every query 3D model only the corresponding 3D models are retrieved as these were previously mapped in the inverted index table. Finally, from the retrieved list by comparing the local features frequency of appearance to the first vocabulary, the final re ranked list of the most similar 3D models is produced.

Manufacturing today can be geographically scattered and reconfigurable. The augmenting use of commissioning and subcontracting is a growing sector. More and more customization of products and processes is required. In this competitive environment, the maintenance process can become one of the key parameters for the operational success. The adoption of novel technologies (that includes industrial IoT, Virtual and Augmented reality-AR, Decision Support Systems-DSS for analysis and recommendations, combined with wearable technologies and localization modules as well as thermal and depth cameras for accident prevention and detection) integrated in a new kind of environment, is helping factories to obtain better quality with less costs. This is especially true in the context of those market niches that are becoming more and more strategic for the European manufacturing industries, characterized by high quality, rapidly changing of products and high embedded value.

Γραφικά και Eικονική Πραγματικότητα [ΠΑΝEΠΙΣΤΗΜΙΟ ΠΑΤΡΩΝ, ΣΧΟΛΗ ΠΟΛΥΤEΧΝΙΚΗ, ΤΜΗΜΑ ΗΛEΚΤΡΟΛΟΓΩΝ ΜΗΧΑΝΙΚΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΤEΧΝΟΛΟΓΙΑΣ ΥΠΟΛΟΓΙΣΤΩΝ]

Γραφικά και Eικονική Πραγματικότητα [ΠΑΝEΠΙΣΤΗΜΙΟ ΠΑΤΡΩΝ, ΣΧΟΛΗ ΠΟΛΥΤEΧΝΙΚΗ, ΤΜΗΜΑ ΗΛEΚΤΡΟΛΟΓΩΝ ΜΗΧΑΝΙΚΩΝ ΚΑΙ ΤEΧΝΟΛΟΓΙΑΣ ΥΠΟΛΟΓΙΣΤΩΝ]

We introduce an open framework for built-in accessibility support at all stages of product development based on the Virtual User Model concept. The goal is to introduce simulation-based and VR testing into the automotive, smart living spaces, workplace, infotainment and personal healthcare applications areas. Our framework also aims to ensure that future products and services are being systematically designed for all people including those with functional limitations. An open simulation platform parted of several tools provides automatic simulation feedback and reporting for guideline/methodologies compliance and quality of service. To achieve this objective, detailed virtual user physical, cognitive, behavioral and psychological models as well as the corresponding simulation models have been integrated to support simulation and testing at all stages of product planning and development.

Among the key components of designing accessible products and services for disabled users is accessibility testing and support. The VERITAS FP7 project has developed a platform that consists of several tools that provide automatic simulation feedback and reporting for built-in accessibility support at all stages of ICT product development. In this explorative pilot study, we evaluated the usability and technology acceptance of using three of these tools in the design of accessible GUI-based ICT products in five application domains. A sample of 80 designers/developers (12 female; 68 male) evaluated the three tools by filling in the standard SUS and TAM questionnaires. Results revealed good usability and technology acceptance for all three tools as a novel accessibility testing method. The VERITAS platform can offer an intuitive solution in accessibility design and can ensure that ICT products are designed for all.