Workshop on XR Solutions for Smart Production (XR-SPro-2022)
17.10.2022 in Singapore, in conjunction with ISMAR 2022 (held physically on site in Singapore)
https://www.xr-spro.net

==Description==
Just like the industrial revolutions before it, smart production (also known as Industry 4.0) is going to increase the ability of workers to create high-quality products and improve the customer experience. However, unlike earlier developments, smart production will allow for high levels of automation, customization, productivity, and efficiency that have never been seen before. Within these "smart factories" all processes interoperate seamlessly based on big data. And as the complexity of the processes increases, the demands placed on the work to be performed increase significantly.
Augmented, virtual and mixed reality technologies offer a wide range of capabilities to support workers in future factories and present information in more interactive ways than their two-dimensional counterparts. XR assistance systems promise to increase the workers’ efficiency by providing the right information at the right moment. If well implemented, XR can provide valuable assistance in increasingly complexity production environments.
Against this background, an increasing impact of production processes supported by XR systems is to be expected within the next years. XR will facilitate work processes and individualize the information required by employees, which is important in times of skill shortages, travel restrictions and social distancing, thus enabling less qualified employees to work in more highly qualified jobs. XR also provides assistance for the higher-skilled to support problem-solving tasks, networking, and documentation of experience. The optimization information visualization, product quality, and processes contributes to securing sustainable safeguarding of manufacturing locations and to creating attractive jobs. However, the implementation of XR applications in manufacturing needs a high user acceptance, which is important for the actual use of the technology in work processes.
Connecting specialists from various related research areas (such as automation systems engineering, production planning, etc.), with experts from both vision-oriented computer science areas (such as computer graphics or information visualization), and experts from XR-oriented computer science areas, the XR-SPro workshop series aims to create an open environment for discussing and investigating novel XR solutions for smart production. This includes (among others) the usage of spatial computing approaches for real-time data visualization, XR-supported remote assistance and customizable training scenarios that mimic reality and let workers train from anywhere at their own pace. By encouraging synergies of interdisciplinary approaches, the workshop tackles different applications of XR in a smart production context from different angles and creates new knowledge in this research field. XR-SPro wants to account to the state-of-the-art research in smart production with different XR applications, to shape a common understanding, to compare systems and approaches and derive common paradigms, to develop useful and necessary methods and techniques, and to foster new ideas.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):
● Use Cases and pilot applications
● XR-supported remote assistance
● XR training and onboarding scenarios
● Spatial computing in industry
● Hardware/Software support for smart production applications of XR
● Gamified XR environments in industry
● Interdisciplinary and intermedia approaches
● User Acceptance of smart production XR applications
● Real-time XR visualization of sensor and process data
● Tactility and physicality of XR applications in smart production

==Deadlines & Dates==
Paper Submission Deadline: July 4, 2022
Notification of acceptance: August 8, 2022
Camera-ready Deadline: August 29, 2022
Workshop day: October 17, 2022

==Contribution Formats==
Following the last years, contributions are planned to be included and indexed in the IEEE digital library.
1. Research Papers (6-8 pages) Novel results in the field in the above-mentioned categories related to XR development.
2. Short Papers (up to 4 pages) Preliminary results or work in progress.
3. State of the Art Reports (6-8 pages) Surveys on the main results in this field, which will allow us to understand and compare achievements and approaches in tackling issues from the XR communities.

Papers must be written in English and follow the IEEE Computer Society VGTC format for described at: https://tc.computer.org/vgtc/publications/conference/

All papers and camera-ready versions have to be submitted electronically using the conference management tool found at the website: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=xrspro2022

Submissions will be reviewed by at least 2 program committee members following a single-blind review process. Accepted papers will be given guidelines in preparing and submitting the final manuscript(s) together with the notification of acceptance.

==Workshop Format==
The XR-SPro workshop will be a half-day event held physically in Singapore. Accepted authors for state of the art descriptions and discussion essays will present their ideas in a panel-like format. Accepted contributions for research papers will be organized in sessions consisting of presentations and discussions.

During panels, we will encourage the active participation of the audience. We expect this structure to provide a more focused discussions and a lively environment. Presenters will be asked to prepare a slide presentation of their accepted contribution. The general audience of this workshop will receive the workshop´s program with a set of questions in advance, which will guide the discussion in each topic´s panel.

==Organizers==
Thomas Moser (St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences), thomas.moser@fhstp.ac.at
Josef Wolfartsberger (University of Applied Sciences Upper Austria), josef.wolfartsberger@fh-ooe.at