The Augmented Reality Internet of Things: Opportunities of Embodied Interactions in Transreality

Human society is encountering a new wave of advancements related to smart connected technologies with the convergence of different traditionally separate fields, which can be characterized by a fusion of technologies that merge and tightly integrate the physical, digital, and biological spheres. In this new paradigm of convergence, all the physical and digital things will become more and more intelligent and connected to each other through the Internet, and the boundary between them will blur and become seamless. In particular, augmented/mixed reality (AR/MR), which combines virtual content with the real environment, is experiencing an unprecedented golden era along with dramatic technological achievements and increasing public interest. Together with advanced artificial intelligence (AI) and ubiquitous computing empowered by the Internet of Things/Everything (IoT/IoE) systems, AR can be our ultimate interface to interact with both digital (virtual) and physical (real) worlds while pervasively mediating and enriching our lives. In this chapter, we describe the concept of transreality that symbiotically connects the physical and the virtual worlds, incorporating the aforementioned advanced technologies, and illustrate how such transreality environments can transform our activities in it, providing intelligent and intuitive interaction with the environment while exploring prior research literature in this domain. We also present the potential of virtually embodied interactions – e.g., employing virtual avatars and agents – in highly connected transreality spaces for enhancing human abilities and perception. Recent ongoing research focusing on the effects of embodied interaction are described and discussed in different aspects, such as perceptual, cognitive, and social contexts. The chapter will end with discussions of potential research directions in the future and implications related to the user experience in transreality.