Section: Application Domains

Application domains

Since our project aims at providing 3D digital worlds to all, including the general public, to stimulate understanding, learning, communication and creation, our scope of applications will naturally be the following one:

• Culture and education: We are convinced that a 3D digital world is a powerful media that may contribute to enhance understanding processes. For example, a museum would benefit from new 3D user interfaces allowing visitors to better understand complex content. Similarly, at school, this media has an extraordinary potential for enhancing learning. For example, a child being able to navigate in archaeological sites, or to manipulate by himself 3D molecules as described previously, will probably understand and learn things while having pleasure in interacting with the content.

• Art: We believe that 3D digital worlds may stimulate creativity, too. Our first investigations with music and drawings have shown that this media opens new possibilities for creation. The challenge here will be to design good interfaces that will allow artists to explore new dimensions. The user may be an experienced artist, or a three years old child who would express his creativity through tools that go beyond papers and pens.

• Assistive technologies: People suffering from motor or cognitive impairments are one of the target populations of the Potioc project. Indeed, we believe that new interfaces that exploit 3D digital worlds may help people to overcome their disabilities. For example, someone with very reduced motor capabilities could benefit from BCI to explore a virtual museum, or a children having difficulties for concentrating may benefit from new 3D interactive systems.

• Entertainment: The objective of Potioc is to open 3D digital worlds to everyone by designing innovative interfaces driven by enjoyment. Consequently, the entertainment industry will be an obvious application domain where Potioc can contribute. This can be in the scope of video games, entertainment parks, Web and TV of the future, applications for mobile devices, and so on.

Naturally, we will not necessarily address all these applications, and certainly not all at the same time. These areas just define the applicative scope of our work. As an example, much of our current work is targeted at artistic and entertainment applications, with VR-based musical performances, augmented paper-based drawing or BCI-based video games. We are also currently starting to conduct research on digital cities, in order to provide ordinary citizens suitable tools and UI to explore 3D content related to their city, such as 3D maps, information about population density or sound nuisance, among other. It should also be noted that our work might find applicative connexions outside these main application domains and benefit to a large range of academic and industrial areas, with which we could build relationships. For example, in the scope of medicine, new and easy to adopt user interfaces designed in Potioc could prove valuable for medical professionals as well, to better access and interact with biological 3D content (e.g., X-rays or MRI scans).