Kick-off: IRIS-XR officially launches in Europe to build the future of Extended Reality
The IRIS-XR consortium officially gathered in Kaiserslautern, Germany, for our project's Kick-off Meeting. Hosted by DFKI (German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence), the project coordinator, the event marked the beginning of an ambitious three-year journey to develop the next generation of human-centred Extended Reality (XR) technologies.
The meeting brought together leading European experts across XR hardware, artificial intelligence, event-based sensing, optics, healthcare, aviation, and automotive innovation to align on our roadmap, vision, and technical objectives.
The vision: more natural, intelligent, and trustworthy XR
Current XR solutions face major hurdles, from visual lag and high energy consumption to user discomfort and privacy concerns. IRIS-XR is designed to overcome these limitations.
The project will create a new hardware-software platform designed to deliver more immersive, responsive, energy-efficient, and accessible XR experiences. By making interaction more intuitive and adaptive, IRIS-XR will help bring XR technologies closer to the needs of real users and professional environments.
From research to real-world impact
The project's innovations will be validated in three pilot areas: mental health and rehabilitation, professional flight simulation, and automotive design reviews. Alongside technological development, IRIS-XR places strong emphasis on accessibility, inclusiveness, privacy, and compliance with European regulations.
Alongside technological breakthroughs, IRIS-XR is deeply committed to accessibility, inclusivity, data privacy, and strict compliance with European standards (including the GDPR and the EU AI Act). By championing trustworthy AI and open interoperability standards, we aim to strengthen Europe's competitive edge in the global spatial computing ecosystem.
Key project highlights
- Development of a next-generation XR hardware-software platform
- Advanced XR display technologies for enhanced visual quality and lower energy consumption
- Integrated eye tracking and event-based sensing for natural interaction
- AI-powered multimodal interaction combining gaze, gesture, and contextual information
- Validation in healthcare, flight simulation, and automotive design environments
- Strong focus on accessibility, ethics, privacy, and trustworthy AI
- Contributions to European interoperability and standardisation initiatives
