Connecting the Proeftuin Project Community through XR & 5G
On the 5th of September at AP Hogeschool, Howest and AP hosted a Proeftuin Media XR & 5G project Community Meetup. A big thanks to all those who attended and presented from the XR, 5G and media, entertainment, event, tourism and sport sector and more!
Citymesh
Make sure to check out this ATV/GVA report about Citymesh’s latest 5G Jeep, “Rambo,” who made an appearance at the event, with Proeftuin steering group member, Citymesh Research Manager, Jens Buysse.
Read more about Citymesh’s 5G Jeep here.
The Media XR & 5G “living lab” project stimulates doing experiments and creating POCs with companies interested in testing the waters of innovative technology. We brainstorm with and advise stakeholders about new forms of media content, advertising and cross-media formats with immersive experiences that are made possible thanks to 5G solutions, such as the Citymesh 5G Jeep.
PLAYAR
It was also great to have a presentation by Bas Gezelle, Co-founder of PLAYAR, a full service AR studio that creates AR activations for agencies, media and brands. Howest Digital Arts & Entertainment Research is currently working with PLAYAR on a Stadium AR business case within the Proeftuin project. Within the project, PLAYAR is not only steering a use case, but would also be a prime valorization partner for companies and organizations looking to create XR experiences and products.
Howest’s Stadium AR & Expo Wayfinding Use Cases
Howest’s Digital Arts & Entertainment Research Project Manager Sarah Markewich and XR Researcher, Ewoud Herregat, gave the project community a look at the Media XR & 5G use cases Howest DAE Research is currently working on. Both cases focus on experimenting with the most recent plugins and tools to support AR experiences at event & entertainment locations, from outdoor football stadiums to indoor expo centers. The goal is to test the best ways to scan locations and create sustainable approaches to using AR for media, entertainment, marketing, steering, wayfinding and the like. Howest’s focus is on locations that generally have high volumes of visitors at the same time, which can be a challenge to 4G and 5K networks.
You can see more details from the slides and photos below.
Howest looks forward to continuing work on the Stadium AR case with PLAYAR and to working more closely with Kortrijk XPO as of early next year on the Expo Wayfinding case. A big thanks goes out to K.V. Kortrijk for letting Howest use their stadium as a living lab for testing scanning plugins, such as Immersal’s.
In 2025, hopefully all lessons learned will result in a final case that combines many elements from these two cases and from those from AP – with a 5G testing ground. Maybe we’ll even call on Citymesh’s “Rambo” for the last case.
AP Hogeschool’s Immersive Lab’s Media, Marketing, Tourism & Gen Z focused Use Cases
Silvia Van Aken, Research coordinator of the Immersive Lab at AP University of Applied Sciences & Arts, highlighted use cases that focus on how to integrate AR into the media, advertising and tourism sectors, such as using AR during bike races in a journalistic way to access data about cyclists and teams and creating interactive walks and city tours using AR. AP is also working with companies that give insights to how Gen Z responds to tech and how to use XR to get Gen Z interested in an event, service or product.
AP’s Immersive Lab
After lunch, those who could stick around got a tour of AP’s Immersive Lab by its researchers. Keerthanan Vignarajah demonstrated how the photogrammetry for full body scanning works. While Rob Mertens is giving a demo of our Xsens suit en Metagloves by Manus, among other related topics, with the intention to inspire the Media XR & 5G project community to think about ways they might be able to incorporate these tools and methods into their own use cases and eventual products.
It was also a moment for the various stakeholders to chat with each other and line up possible future collaborations, and to ask the research teams any questions they had about the project and the technology.
Proeftuin Media XR & 5G Steering Group
We’re still looking for companies to join the project’s steering group and be a part of use cases in 2025, run by our research groups and/or through student (student research) projects and opportunities at Howest and AP. If you haven’t joined the project yet and are interested in benefitting from and contributing to this mainly VLAIO-funded, XR & 5G focused “living lab,” please contact Sarah Markewich from Howest and/or Silvia Van Aken from AP. We and our researchers are excited to continue to bring stakeholders from the media & entertainment fields together and to work with state-of-the-art tools on innovative, future-forward cases for the XR & 5G sectors.
Save the Date: 25 February 2025 for the next Steering Group Meetup at Howest in Kortrijk
Interested in joining but not yet in contact with Sarah from Howest or Silvia from AP? Contact us! We hope to see everyone who joined us on 5 September at AP in Kortrijk on 25 February, as well as new faces to the Proeftuin Media XR & 5G project community.
