Three years of intense work have just concluded! We are thrilled to announce that our consortium has successfully completed the BRIDGES project, achieving all the goals we set out to accomplish!

During this incredible journey, we worked together as a team with determination and passion to overcome every challenge that arose. We are grateful for the commitment and collaboration of every consortium member, who contributed to making this extraordinary outcome possible.

We will definitely miss the project meetings, those moments when we gathered to exchange ideas, make decisions, and plan for the future. Each meeting was an opportunity for us to grow as a group and face challenges together.

We will also remember the evaluation tests of our platform conducted at two important European airports and a fascinating cultural organization. Those were exciting moments where we could evaluate our work, improve the platform’s quality, and ensure that the BRIDGES extended reality meets the needs of end users.

Now, looking towards the future, our extended reality platform is prepared to address the challenges faced by firefighters in other European airports and cultural organizations that wish to offer an immersive experience to their visitors.

We would like to thank everyone who supported our project, the partners, collaborators, and stakeholders who believed in our work. Without you, we wouldn’t have been able to achieve everything we have accomplished.

Professor Maria Roussou, who is a partner in our project, presented both pilots of the BRIDGES project to faculty and students of EVL and the Computer Science Department of the University of Illinois at Chicago, in front of 35 attendees, on May 3, 2023.

She delivered a thought-provoking talk titled “Extending the Virtual: The Museum as a Hybrid Experience”.

In this captivating discussion, she delved into the groundbreaking use of advanced digital technologies, like Virtual Reality (VR), within the GLAM sector (galleries, libraries, archives, museums, etc.).

These technologies are indeed revolutionizing the way visitors engage with cultural institutions, taking immersive experiences to new heights.

While the initial focus was on reconstructing reality to overcome the limitations of physical environments, a paradigm shift has occurred. The emphasis has now shifted towards seamlessly integrating the physical and virtual realms. By closely intertwining the digital with the physical space, a hybrid reality is created, where tangible objects play a central role in visitors’ digital experiences.

Professor Maria Roussou drew upon a wide array of cutting-edge immersive technologies, including high-end eXtended Reality (XR) applications and mobile tours designed for cultural and informal educational purposes.

The discussion explored how this hybrid future is transforming traditional didactic walkthroughs into playful, emotive, and socially shared experiences. The goal is to create interactions that are not only meaningful and interactive but also relevant and resonant with the target audience.

The informal education pilot of BRIDGES was presented in an invited talk delivered by Associate Professor Maria Roussou of the University of Athens at the Advancing Digital Exhibition of Cultural Heritage Symposium, held at the prestigious Institute for the Study of Ancient Cultures of The University of Chicago, May 5-6, 2023.

The symposium was a first-of-its-kind event that featured presentations by 21 speakers representing museums, cultural institutions, and universities from China, Greece, Italy, Nigeria, Switzerland, and the United States.

The presentations showcased the wide spectrum of emerging technologies being used in exhibition environments to tell richer stories about cultural artifacts.

The event attracted over 70 people in person, in Chicago. For those who were not able to attend, the video of the entire event is posted at the following link, and the part where BRIDGES is presented is available here.

Another step has been taken for the project’s dissemination efforts: the Hellenic Fire Corps (a member of the BRIDGES Advisory User Group) has included BRIDGES in their booth at the International Defence and Security Exhibition DEFEA ’23, held from 9 to 11 of May 2023 in Athens.

The BRIDGES project thanks the Hellenic Fire Corps and especially their team at the AIA for their contribution to the project and congratulates them for their efforts!

The results of the Bridges’ Informal Learning Pilot were presented at the first Global eXtended Reality Summit that took place in Athens, at the Hellenic Cosmos Cultural Center on the 11th of May 2023.

The Summit hosted top-of-the-line researchers, creators, business entrepreneurs, investors, and stakeholders from the global XR community. 

Watch our presentation! 

We have come a long way together but the summative evaluation sessions are (almost) completed!

In the last month, we have tested the BRIDGES platform at the Foundation of Hellenic World: 14 teams, 56 visitors of all ages (from 14 to over 65), 10.03 Gigabytes of photos and video observation data, 4.6 hours of interview and focus group audio recordings…

We’d like to thank the staff of the Foundation of Hellenic World and Bolt Virtual for working overtime on evenings and weekends to support us, our volunteers, and all our partners for the support in conducting this study.

We are still open to improve our platform, for this reason we will be carrying out a few more sessions of the experience with “smell” in order to maximise the realism.

We will present our most recent publication within the BRIDGES project “Creating Informal Learning and First Responder Training XR Experiences with the ImmersiveDeck” at the TrainingXR workshop at IEEE VR 2023.

The talk is scheduled for March 24th 11:10pm Eastern Standard Time (March 25th 11:10am Shanghai time).

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Evalutation sessions ended and our extended reality platoform is now available.

We asked “early adopters” their insights about the XR experience and what they liked most about the platform for the pilot in cultural and educational sector. Here a brief collection of their feedback!

The formative evaluation sessions for Pilot 1 at the Athens International Airport and Pilot 2 at the Foundation of the Hellenic World ended last week.

The team of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens administered pre-experience and post-experience questionnaires and conducted interviews with several focus groups.

The evaluation session of Pilot 1 – industrial training – involved 4 participants (2 trainees and 2 trainers), whereas for Pilot 2 – informal education – the University involved 22 participants (who had not been in BRIDGES before).

The Pilot 2 participants experienced the BRIDGES technology being organized in small groups of 3 or 4 people each (in total 6 groups).

In the next few days, the University team will produce the reports, which will be used to revise the BRIDGES instruments based on the outcomes of these and previous sessions.

The NKUA team especially wishes to thank Dr. Sophia Bakogianni for her invaluable help and of course Dimi Christopoulos, George Sofianopoulos, Sakis Rogkas, Lucas Katsikaris, Abraham Onassiadis, Spyros Papagiannis, Christos Koumvakis, and the BRIDGES Advisory Board members from the AIA Fire Brigade (director and officers).