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Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in their efforts to develop and market new products. Looks at the issues from different strategic levels such as corporate, international, military and economic. Presents 31 case studies, including the success of Japan in microchips to the failure of Xerox to sell its invention of the Alto personal computer 3 years before Apple: from the success in DNA and Superconductor research to the success of Sunbeam in inventing and marketing food processors: and from the daring invention and production of atomic energy for survival to the successes of sewing machine inventor Howe in co‐operating on patents to compete in markets. Includes 306 questions and answers in order to qualify concepts introduced.

At present, teaching methods based on 2D drawings are still commonly used for educating students on the location of steel reinforcement bars in concrete. However, traditional teaching methods have limitations as students can find it difficult to understand 2D drawings. This study aims to develop an interactive and collaborative augmented reality environment (ICARE) using augmented reality (AR) technology to improve students' engagement in learning.

This study develops an ICARE prototype, which is organized into two stages: (1) The augmented teaching environment comprising of models and interactive components; (2) The AR collaborative application which uses Photon Unity Networking (PUN) plugin and Azure spatial anchors cloud service. The AR-based teaching environment runs with Universal Windows Platform (UWP) to enable development in the HoloLens 2 through Microsoft Visual Studio.

An experimental study was conducted, where 60 students were divided into three groups employing Drawings-based, building information modeling (BIM)-based and AR-based methods for teaching. After the test, the three groups of students were requested to complete a questionnaire. According to the analysis of the experimental results, the ICARE can improve students' comprehension, memory of learned materials and their ability to read and understand steel reinforcement drawings improving the quality of teaching, especially interactivity and engagement.

As illustrated in the experiments, the developed ICARE has outstanding performance over conventional approaches in civil engineering courses that can improve students' comprehension and memory of knowledge and their ability to read and understand steel bar drawings. This study provides empirical evidence that AR is a promising technology that can be integrated with traditional classroom instruction and can improve students' comprehension and memory of knowledge and their ability to read and understand steel bar drawings.

The concept of touristic space is continually evolving, due to the advent of new technologies. Today, physical space and virtual space are interwoven, creating a phenomenon that can be described using the term ‘phygital’. The perception of touristic space as well as the interaction with it has been altered by phygital appearances and changing travel behaviour. While interaction with the touristic space previously only occupied a physical dimension, virtual information now enriches all stages of the customer journey (CJ). Hence, this chapter deals with new technologies, analysing their impact on the perception of touristic space for the traveller throughout the whole CJ. Thereby Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality are cited as examples of state-of-the-art technologies, which wield a direct perceptional impact, as they have the power to blend together one’s perception of real and virtual space.

Augmented reality (AR) has emerged as a new interactive technology, swiftly transforming the field of marketing. Driven by its rapid uptake in marketing practices, academic research on AR has proliferated. This study aims to offer a holistic view of the past, present and future of augmented reality marketing (ARM) scholarship by analyzing its current and evolving research profile as well as its social and conceptual structures to inspire further research.

This study enriches the ARM scholarship by integrating a quantitative bibliometric analysis with a chronological-thematic review and a qualitative content analysis to develop a more comprehensive understanding of this novel area and suggest future research courses.

The bibliometric analysis reveals the key performance indicators as well as the social and conceptual structure of the ARM research field. The chronological-thematic review exhibits the advancement of ARM research over time and forecasts the emerging trends for the domain. Finally, the content analysis of recent articles reveals the current research hotspots and provides future research directions.

The database limits the selection of literature, as the information in databases such as Scopus is updated regularly, resulting in alterations in the number of articles and citations.

AR developers and brand managers may use this study’s findings to understand the current ARM landscape better and make strategic decisions based on AR adoption and consumption patterns.

This study is singular in using a mixed methods approach by integrating the findings from bibliometric and content analyses for more reliable results and to offer a holistic perspective of the ARM sector, thereby significantly advancing the field of technology-led marketing.

Mobile devices, through their capacity to enable anytime-anywhere learning as well as capture, annotate and share multimedia, offer entirely new ways for students to learn. This chapter provides review of mobile learning with a particular focus on learning design. First various definitions and characteristics of mobile learning are examined in order to establish a common understanding of its boundaries and meaning. Example uses of mobile learning in schools and higher education are described as a way to provide a more concrete understanding of design possibilities. Benefits of mobile learning are unpacked, as distilled from the literature, including the ability to provide flexible, accessible, authentic, personalized, ubiquitous and seamless learning. Mobile learning issues are also examined, including technical problems, cognitive load issues, distraction, equity and safety. A primary school science and a university pre-service teacher education vignette are described so as to offer a more in-depth illustration of what mobile learning can look like and achieve in practice. Finally, mobile learning research findings and observations are synthesized into recommendations, to inform and guide evidence-based mobile learning design practices. Opportunities for future research and investigation are also discussed.

Mixed reality is expanding in the industrial market and several companies in various fields are adapting this set of technologies for various purposes, such as optimizing processes, improving the programming tasks and promoting the interactivity of their products with the users, or even improving teaching or training. Robotics is another area that can benefit from these recent technologies. In fact, most of the current and futuristic robotic applications, namely, the areas related to advanced manufacturing tasks (e.g. additive-manufacturing, collaborative robotics, etc.), require new technics to actually perceive the result of several actions, including programming tasks, anticipate trajectories, visualize the motion and related information, interface with programmers and users and several other human–machine interfaces. Consequently, this paper aims to explain a new concept of human–machine interfaces aiming to improve the interaction between advanced users and industrial robotic work cells.

The presented concept uses two different applications (apps) developed to explore the advanced features of the Microsoft HoloLens device. The objectives of the project reported in this paper are to optimize robot paths, just by allowing the advanced user to adjust the selected path through the mixed reality environment, and create new paths, just by allowing the advanced user to insert points in the mixed reality environment, correct them as needed, connect them using a certain type of motion, parametrize them (in terms of velocity, motion precision, etc.) and command them to the robot controller.

The solutions demonstrated in this paper show how mixed reality can be used to allow users, with limited programming experience, to fully use the robotics fields. They also show clearly that the integration of the mixed reality technology in the current robot systems will be a turning point in reducing the complexity for end-users.

There are two challenges in the developed applications. The first relates to the robot tool identification, which is very sensitive to lighting conditions or to very complex robot tools. This can result in positioning errors when the software shows the path in the mixed reality scene. The paper presents solutions to overcome this problem. Another unattended challenge is associated with handling the robot singularities when adjusting or creating new paths. Ongoing work is concentrated in creating mechanisms that prevent the end-user to create paths that contain unreachable points or paths that are not feasible because of bad motion parameters.

This paper demonstrates the utilization of mixed reality device to improve the tasks of programming and commanding manufacturing work cells based on industrial robots [see video in (Pires et al., 2018)]. As the presented devices and robot cells are the basis for Industry 4.0 objectives, this demonstration has a vast field of application in the near future, positively influencing the way complex applications, that require much close cooperation between humans and machines, are thought, planned and built. The paper presents two different applications fully ready to use in industrial environments. These applications are scientific experiments designed to demonstrate the principles and technologies of mixed reality applied to industrial robotics, namely, for improving the programming task.

Although the HoloLens device opens outstanding new areas for robot command and programming, it is still expensive and somehow heavy for everyday use. Consequently, this opens an opportunity window to combine these devices with other mobile devices, such as tablets and phones, building applications that take advantage of their combined features.

The paper presents two different applications fully ready to use in industrial environments. These applications are scientific experiments designed to demonstrate the principles and technologies of mixed reality applied to industrial robotics, namely, for improving the programming task. The first application is about path visualization, i.e. enables the user to visualize, in a mixed reality environment, any path preplanned for the robot cell. With this feature, the advanced user can follow the robot path, identify problems, associate any difficulty in the final product with a particular issue in the robot paths, anticipate execution problems with impact on the final product quality, etc. This is particularly important for not only advanced applications, but also for cases where the robot path results from a CAD package (in an offline fashion). The second application consists of a graphical path manipulation procedure that allows the advanced user to create and optimize a robot path. Just by exploring this feature, the end-user can adjust any path obtained from any programming method, using the mixed reality approach to guide (visually) the path manipulation procedure. It can also create a completely new path using a process of graphical insertion of point positions and paths into the mixed reality scene. The ideas and implementations of the paper are original and there is no other example in the literature applied to industrial robot programming.

The relationship between medicine and video games is growing tremendously. In the field of medicine, realistic simulation and games have risen in popularity, and in turn, gamification has transformed the game elements into a non-gaming world for human engagement like motivation and performance. It is not surprising that game-based learning has branched out in the realm of the medical world. The person’s psychological state determines the effectiveness of education during training. This study aims to examine how the usage of immersive technology impacts users’ tendency to access immersive resources for learning during an emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic. Augmented reality (AR) apps have grown to be a popular tool in education nowadays. The purpose of using AR applications is to impart knowledge during the COVID-19 pandemic. An investigation was conducted to test the effectiveness of immersive technology in learning by developing a game-based experimental model and testing it on 100 non-randomly selected users of various ages. This study shows that users are open to new teaching approaches, including AR applications, in response to the challenges presented by the pandemic. AR applications provide a potential solution to the difficulties associated with education by providing an immersive and interesting experience that enhances learning-based results. This demonstrates that while using AR apps, an individual’s viewpoints and sense of control over their learning are more essential in influencing their conduct. By integrating AR apps into learning systems, immersive education may enhance users’ engagement, motivation and overall learning experiences.

Convenience sampling was chosen as the method for data analysis. One hundred users from a leading private university in the northwest part of India participated in this study. This gave a minimum sample size of 79 participants. To analyse the user experience (UX), a UX questionnaire was adopted. In this research paper, the researcher explores the importance of immersive games that emphasise awareness and experience through a series of questionnaires to assess the effective awareness of COVID through immersive technology, because the immersive element plays a major role in the quality and success of awareness through COVID-19 fighter video games as an interactive learning platform.

Results showed that most people do not know how to deal with an infected person in a critical situation; either they feel scared or deal without taking precautions. COVID-19 fighters are empowered with a virtual patient, which players can interact with. Once the user finishes the FPS game, he must find out the source of viruses that will be an AR-based virtual patient. The first step of the instruction will ask the user to give the mask to the infected person; in the second step, it will ask the user to sanitise his body. In the third step, it will ask to hospitalise.

The research offers empirical evidence on the effectiveness of augmented reality-based game approaches to increase reality in basic education to boost the awareness of individuals. The report also gives an example of good cross-cutting education materials that provide the player with a very valuable tool for understanding knowledge of covid awareness by playing the COVID-19 fighter game.

With the rapid development of technology, 360° panorama on mobile as a very convenient way to present virtual reality has brought a new shopping experience to consumers. Usually, consumers get product information through virtual annotations in 360° panorama and then make a series of shopping behaviors. The visual design of virtual annotation significantly influences users' online visual search for product information. This study aims to investigate the influence of the visual design of virtual annotation on consumers' shopping experience in the online shopping interface of 360° panorama.

A 2 × 3 between-subject design was planned to help explore whether different display model of annotation (i.e. negative polarity and positive polarity) and different background transparency of annotation (i.e. 0% transparency, 25% transparency and 50% transparency) may affect users' task performance and their subjective evaluations.

(1) Virtual annotations with different background transparency affect user performance, and transparency has better visual search performance. (2) Virtual annotation background display mode may affect the user operation performance; the positive polarity of the virtual annotation is more convenient for the users' visual searching for product information. (3) When the annotation background transparency is opaque or semi-transparent, the negative polarity display is more favorable to the users' visual search. However, this situation is reversed when the annotation background transparency is 25%. (4) Participants preferred the presentation of positive polarity virtual annotations. (5) Regarding the degree of willingness to use and ease of understanding, participants preferred the negative polarity display for 0% background transparency or 50% background transparency. However, the opposite result was obtained for 25% background transparency.

The findings generated from the research can be a good reference for the development of virtual annotation visual design for mobile shopping applications.

1. Virtual annotation background transparency and background display mode are two essential attributes of 360° panoramas.

2. This study examined how virtual annotation background transparency and background display mode influence user performance and experience.

3. It is recommended to use a translucent or opaque annotation background with a negative polarity display.

4. Virtual annotation presentation with 25% background transparency facilitates consumer searching and comparison of product information.

5. Users prefer a positive polarity annotation display.

Virtual annotation background transparency and background display mode are two essential attributes of 360° panoramas.

This study examined how virtual annotation background transparency and background display mode influence user performance and experience.

It is recommended to use a translucent or opaque annotation background with a negative polarity display.

Virtual annotation presentation with 25% background transparency facilitates consumer searching and comparison of product information.

Users prefer a positive polarity annotation display.