HORIZON 2020 - Collaboration agreement on Artificial Intelligence for extended social interaction

The projects, which succeeded in the FET Proactive Emerging Paradigms and Communities call (FETPROACT-EIC-07-2020), subtopic A: Artificial Intelligence for extended social interaction, have set a collaboration agreement to strengthen dissemination and impact of project results

Related topics

ICT Research & Innovation EU countries EIC

date: 17/02/2021

The FET Proactive Emerging Paradigms and Communities call aims to explore and consolidate a new technological direction in order to put it firmly on the map as a viable paradigm for future technology and to stimulate the emergence of a European innovation eco-system around a new technological paradigm. The subtopic A: Artificial Intelligence for extended social interaction explores the combination of new Artificial Intelligence (AI) and immersive interaction technologies to enhance the social dimension in future virtual social spaces.

A total of 38 proposals were submitted to the subtopic A. Out of them, 4 gained support under the EIC Pathfinder/FET Proactive funding scheme: CAROUSEL, EXPERIENCE, SONICOM and TOUCHLESS.

CAROUSEL paves the way for emergence of social- physical behaviour of digital characters by better understanding human body-language and being capable to interact autonomously with a group of people. Learn more about the project in our article about the CAROUSEL project.

EXPERIENCE focused on virtual and augmented reality. With the help of artificial intelligence, it provides a yet-uncovered dimension of interpersonal communication. Learn more about the project in our article about the EXPERIENCE project.

SONICOM develops an immersive audio technology, which will revolutionise the way we interact socially within augmented reality/virtual reality environments and applications. Learn more about the project in our article about the SONICOM project.

TOUCHLESS proposes innovation in haptic technologies used in virtual social interactions. It could help people who cannot fulfil their need for touch, e.g. because of social distancing rules. Learn more about the project in our article about the TOUCHLESS project.

The four projects will join forces through a series of collaboration activities, which will examine interaction technologies to enhance the social dimension in future virtual social spaces. An example of an area for such a collaboration is the multimodal aspect of Virtual and Augmented Reality. Specifically, the need for any immersive system/application to account for the various human senses, including video, audio, touch and others.

Collaborative work in this direction will allow not only to share best practices and state-of-the-art technologies, but also to take the potential achievements of each individual project well beyond what was originally envisaged. Furthermore, the organisation of activities such as special issues on academic journals, workshops and special sessions at international conferences, and other knowledge transfer efforts, will maximise the potential impact of the collaborative research.

Background information

FET-Open and FET Proactive are now part of the Enhanced European Innovation Council (EIC) Pilot (specifically the Pathfinder), the new home for deep-tech research and innovation in Horizon 2020, the EU funding programme for research and innovation.