ABOUT

Vision

XReco will pave the way for lifting the use of XR media content from being occasionally involved in media production to being regularly integrated in the media industry.

Mission

XReco’s mission is to make it easier to integrate XR content into the media industry by providing a platform that facilitates content sharing, search, and discovery.

Our technologies enable the creation of XR content faster and without the need for specific coding skills. We aim to create meaningful contributions of XR content through the creation of 3D objects and scenes from 2D images, changing the lighting of 3D objects, converting presenter videos into 3D representations, and controlling the viewpoint via smartphones. Additionally, our technology allows for teleporting news presenters on-site and location-based augmented reality, such as placing images or 3D objects in actual geo-locations.

In our XR Media Ecosystem we want to support the creation of XR experiences as well as sharing them with interested content creators, including buying and selling, based on fair copyright management and monetization schemes.

Objectives

While media organizations increasingly support non-linear experiences for the consumer, those are still limited to single channels and media domains. Although several media organizations have recently succeeded in breaking data silos, data sharing is mostly limited to the organization.

XReco will create a new data-driven ecosystem for the media industry, focusing on facilitating data sharing, search and discovery and supporting creation of news and entertainment content. The focus will be on the creation and (re-)use of location-related 2D and 3D assets and the creation of XR experiences.

The ecosystem’s core, represented by a Neural Media Repository (NMR), will foster inter-organisation content sharing and provide increased access to content for media creators, considering novel data monetization and rights management policies. A set of AI-based media transformation services are built around the NMR to produce novel media-and XR experiences, including 3D neural reconstructions, neural based device localisation, image stitching, de-/re-lighting and holoportation.

The developed technology will be validated in use case scenarios for the news media for XR-based broadcasting and automatic and customized multitarget news publishing, and for location-based information and entertainment content, with applications that also work in tourism and the automotive industry.

XReco will build an enabling technology and pave the way for lifting the use of XR media content from being occasionally involved in media production to being regularly integrated in the media industry.

Advisory Board

Laura Hirvi
Academic Partnerships Manager for Meta

Laura Hirvi holds a Ph.D. in ethnology and worked as a researcher in Finland, California and India. Currently, she is working as the Academic Partnership Manager as part of the European Policy & Programs team for Meta with a focus on academic partners doing research on the metaverse. Prior to this, she was the Managing Director of the Virtual Reality Association Berlin Brandenburg (VRBB, now XRBB) and also worked for more than six years as the Director of the Finnish Institute in Berlin. Her interest is to bring together different stakeholders from academia, culture and industry to exchange ideas and develop relevant projects on current topics.

Laetitia Bochud
Director at Virtual Switzerland

A political scientist trained in Switzerland and the United States, Laetitia Bochud led the communication and marketing department of a luxury brand for the Swiss market, among other project management activities. In 2017, she joined the stimulating scene of immersive technologies with Virtual Switzerland. Besides facilitating projects and productions, Laetitia is also a university CAS lecturer, jury member, and public speaker. Elected Digital Shaper 2022, Laetitia works as a consultant and chairs XR4Europe, an association that supports and federates European XR professionals, and that is involved in Horizon Europe projects. She is also and ambassador for Women in immersive Tech in Switzerland, and the global lead for the IMPULSE Programme – the European XR Accelerator, one of the initiatives she helped co-create.

Pablo César
Researcher and Group Leader at CWI and Professor at TU Delft

Pablo Cesar has led the Distributed and Interactive Systems (DIS) group at CWI since 2014 and is Professor of Human-Centered Multimedia Systems in the Department of Intelligent Systems (INSY) at TU Delft. He has received the prestigious 2020 Netherlands Prize for ICT Research. He is IEEE Senior member and ACM Distinguished Member. His research focuses on measuring and evaluating the way users interact and communicate with each other using a wide range of decentralised digital systems. Cesar has co-directed several research projects (H2020, FP7, FP6, PPP, NWO), including the ongoing ones from Horizon Europe: TRANSMIXR and VOXReality. He is particularly interested about the authoring and delivery opportunities for immersive media that the XReco project explores.

Marloes Pomp
Vice President European AI Forum

Marloes Pomp is the Initiator and Program Officer for the blockchain and AI projects within the Dutch Government, including projects in the field of digital identities, logistics, healthcare, finance and food. She is also responsible for the international strategy and partnerships of the Dutch Blockchain Coalition and the National AI Coalition. She is also the Vice President of the European AI Forum, a platform where entrepreneurs and policymakers get together to jointly determine the path forward for European AI innovation.
Her professional interests focus on tech-innovation within the public domain. Prior to the blockchain and AI activities, Marloes Pomp worked in several roles like projectleader and researcher at governmental organizations, including the ministry of Interior and Kingdom Relations and the city of Amsterdam. In addition, she serves as an advisory member for the SIDN Fund, the Dutch Court, The Blockchain and the Society Board of the University of Amsterdam (VU).