Extended Reality in critical sectors: Exploring the use cases and challenges

Abstract

Critical sectors such as healthcare, energy production or defense increasingly consider the use of Extended Reality (XR) technologies as a way to enhance training and facilitate operations. In this context, immersive technologies bring forth new opportunities, but also a range of privacy and security challenges that, to date, remain understudied. To evaluate and address those challenges, there is a need to better understand the contexts and purposes for which XR is used in critical sectors. Based on data collected through an online questionnaire (N=6) and a series of semi-structured in-depth interviews (N=7) with professionals from a diverse pool of Norwegian organizations using XR, this study explores various characteristics of relevant use cases of XR, with a focus on critical sectors. Our findings indicate that XR, and in particular VR, is already used in a large range of sectors, with training being the most prominent purpose. Nonetheless, these use cases are still relatively immature and various barriers limit the current use of XR in critical sectors. Further, while privacy and security are considered to be important, they are not a driving concern yet, and will need to be further taken into account before XR can be leveraged more broadly in critical sectors. These results aim to help to orient future research efforts towards reconciling usability, security and privacy for XR in the Norwegian ecosystem.