ARENA Wins at Mixed and Augmented Reality Conference

The Augmented Reality Edge Networking Architecture (ARENA), a unique networking platform designed by the CONIX Research Center, recently won a hybrid conference competition held at IEEE’S Mixed and Augmented Reality Conference (ISMAR).

The purpose of the ISMAR Contest is to stimulate innovative and creative solutions to facilitating the “Hybrid Conference of the Future,” in which conference attendees can synchronously engage each other intellectually and socially in a natural manner, as if they were co-located in the same real-world venue, despite only some being physically present at the venue, while others attend remotely. The theme of the contest is Natural Social Interactions. 

Led by Anthony Rowe, the Siewioek and Walker Family Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the ARENA aims to change the way physical and digital entities interact, combining Augmented Reality (AR) with Virtual Reality (VR) into a single platform. Inside the ARENA, users can attend a virtual conference, hold meetings in a digital replica of their office, or even swing by a coffee shop to chit chat with colleagues—just a few of the many social interactions that have been lost to the remote work environment. These innovations are possible thanks to collaborative mixed reality technologies that link headsets and smart devices in a way that seamlessly blends the physical with the virtual.