P.3D.I – Intelligent 3D Platform for the generation of professional ecosystems
Program: support grants for Innovative Business Groupings in order to improve the competitiveness of small and medium-sized companies and the call for applications for the year 2022, within the framework of the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.
Referencia: AEI-010500-2022b-216
RESOLUTION Date: 11/23/2022
Execution date: 06/30/2022 – 04/29/2023
The objective of this project is the creation of a 3D Platform with Artificial Intelligence (P.3D.I) that promotes the creation of a Professional Ecosystem, growing and sustainable, where new virtual activities of promotion, sales and training are developed. All this combined with cutting-edge technologies such as 3D, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), Virtual Reality and no-code. This platform is the perfect example of hybridization between the real world and the digital world, as it offers the possibility of carrying out face-to-face professional activities from a delocalized and virtual environment. To this end, P.3D.I draws inspiration from the concept of physical trade shows (e.g. Mobile World Congress, Consumer Electronics Show), massive online learning platforms (e.g. Coursera, edX) and professional social networks (e.g. LinkedIn).
The keys to the success of the P.3D.I. platform lie in the democratization of the technology for service providers and the naturalization of its use for platform users. For the former, the platform greatly reduces the time, cost and expertise required to have a presence in the Professional Ecosystem, compared to more traditional options (e.g., setting up a booth at a large trade show). For the latter, the availability of immersive 3D interfaces, intelligent virtual assistants, multi-user experiences (with avatars, messages and voice in real time) or gamified dynamics allow to overcome the typical coldness of the online professional platforms of reference (e.g. Coursera, LinkedIn) and pose a very valid complement for promotion, sales and training activities in the real world.
The P.3D.I platform presents a permanent 3D HUB, accessible via browser, which connects the user to hybrid spaces and events and where he/she can quickly meet other professionals with common interests (e.g. potential suppliers, customers or sponsors), get trained in new methodologies and technologies (e.g. agile, Data Science, NLP) and discover new products and services for sale or in pre-launch, etc. This offers a new integrated concept in the way of relating, close to the new social and technological evolution in the professional field. For professional service providers, the P.3D.I platform features a web configurator and a virtual space editor that allows them to represent their companies and businesses as virtual spaces or twins, connect them with others and increase their visibility through the HUB, and easily implement new or hybridized monetizable services with those in the real world.
The technical objectives for the creation of the Intelligent 3D Platform (P.3D.I) that drives a Professional Ecosystem are the following:
●Incorporate cognitive services to provide the platform with the ability to perceive and process user needs. By means of virtual personal assistants, the user’s questions and concerns will be processed, generating recommendations about the virtual spaces, about their services, about other users of the platform (e.g. users with common interests), etc.
●Incorporate advanced Artificial Intelligence user profiling services that provide the platform with data analysis capabilities to better understand users, their interests and profiles and thus increase platform engagement.
● Collect data from users who participate in the virtual spaces to subsequently generate reports from which to obtain objective information and thus, know the demand in real time with respect to the offer exposed. With this, it will be possible to create different consumer profiles and identify different patterns in order to develop solutions more faithful to the user.
●Establish an intergenerational UX adapted to the different user profiles of the platform, such as: the user’s age, the professional work they perform, their economic level, their ability in the use of new technologies, their physical, cognitive or sensory limitations, etc.
● Create a no-code inspired interactive virtual space (and twin) web configurator and editor that allows service providers to prototype and produce fully customized interactive virtual spaces quickly and easily. The no-code philosophy allows anyone to create applications and programs through simple actions in a graphical interface, so they do not need to know how to program.
●Adapt a 3D video game engine based on WebGL technology (specifically PlayCanvas) to be reactive, i.e., to be able to modify aspects of the developed project and see those changes updated in real time. In addition, this adaptation will allow the creation of virtual spaces with very little technical programming (no-code philosophy).
●Integrate a range of services in virtual spaces, related to the professional verticals of training, events and e-commerce. Some examples are: gamification or learning processes through the mechanics of games, payment gateways to allow the purchase and sale of products, streaming of lectures and talks or even interactive walks in space through Virtual Reality.
●Create a broad catalog of optimized 3D elements to enable customization of the experience that service providers offer to users. The creations include: a catalog of 3D elements (avatars, 3D scenes, furniture, accessories, basic shapes, etc.) with a minimum number of polygons, with textures with the lowest possible resolution and with a simple skeleton to enable the most important animations. This optimization will allow virtual spaces and virtual twins to run on low performance devices (e.g. low-end cell phones).
● Develop an architecture for the multi-user service that allows having a large number of users simultaneously in the same virtual spaces of the platform, without compromising the integrity of the experience. Data persistence will be added to this architecture in order to store the states of the different users. This architecture must allow bidirectional communication through chat, voice, sending emojis and updating animations.
●Create a welcome space on the platform (HUB) that serves as a connection point between all the different spaces and virtual twins created on the platform. This space allows platform users to view data relating to these spaces in real time (connected users, live streaming, active object sales, etc.).
To provide the platform with scalability directives that allow it to have the capacity to adapt and respond in terms of performance, as the number of users participating in the platform increases exponentially. Among the different policies, vertical scaling (increasing the available server resources) is the simplest but most limited option, and horizontal scaling (increasing the number of available machines).
●Implement security measures that protect the entire infrastructure, as well as everything linked to it, and especially the information contained within the servers or that which circulates through the different connections, especially those related to payment services.
GRUPO ASIS BIOMEDIA SL UNIPERSONAL
IMASCONO ART, S.L
CLUSTER OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, ELECTRONICS AND TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANIES OF ARAGON
TECHNOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF ARAGON
TOTAL PROJECT BUDGET: 342,226.50€.
TOTAL BUDGET ITAINNOVA: 65.950€.
TOTAL PROJECT FINANCING: 262,055 €.
TOTAL FINANCING ITANNOVA: 42,867 €.
This project is funded by the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism of the Government of Spain, under the support program for innovative business clusters and by the European Union “Next GenerationEU” PRTR, being project reference AEI-010500-2022b-216.
