6th Augmented, Virtual, and Mixed Realities Workshop: xR Technologies in Digital Engineering EnvironmentsAR/VR 2025

Scope

In recent years, efforts have been made to incorporate augmented, virtual, and mixed reality (xR) technologies across multiple phases of the space mission development lifecycle. Digital engineering (DE), an integrated approach that uses system data and models to support lifecycle activities from concept through disposal, has gained traction as a way to modernize the systems development process and sustain space systems with significant cost savings. xR technologies provide an enabling capability for visualization and human-machine interaction in DE environments. Continuing the success of the xR workshops held at SMC-IT 2024, 2023, 2021, 2019 and 2017, this full day workshop seeks to discuss and demonstrate successes, challenges, and failures associated with integrating xR technologies in space mission IT systems across the space mission lifecycle and DE enterprise.

Relevance Statement

Information Technology (IT) systems for space missions are increasingly handling greater volumes of data, being deployed earlier in the lifecycle, and intersect vast and varied constituency groups. With engineering environments becoming largely digital, xR technologies provide capabilities for visualizing and interacting with data and models throughout the system development lifecycle. Lower costs for commodity hardware, increased hardware reliability and robustness of the software development toolchain, and widespread availability of xR devices has resulted in efforts to realize the perceived benefits of these technologies through integration with a variety of user tasks. Understanding the state of the art and best practices for xR technologies prepare practitioners to enable new and valuable user experiences.

Call for Papers, Presentations, and/or Demos

Theme: xR Technologies in Digital Engineering environments

Goals: Upon completion of this full day workshop, attendees will have a greater appreciation and understanding for what xR technologies are, what problems they solve, where best to deploy them for greatest mission effect, and what current challenges to consider when adopting them in space mission digital engineering environments.

Topics covered will include:

• Survey of current xR tools and technologies

• Discussion of applicability of xR technologies to DE in the space mission lifecycle

• Current challenges that exist in adopting xR technology-based solutions

• Exploring xR technologies in the DE Enterprise beyond Digital Twins

• Pathways to xR use in secure environments

• Demonstrations of xR applications

Paper Submissions

We are accepting both papers and presentations, with accompanying demonstrations; accepted papers will be published in the IEEE proceedings.