XRTC Home
Carnegie Mellon is world-renowned for its innovations in technologies driving the evolution of Extended Reality (XR) — mobile computing, new Augmented Reality (AR)-chipsets, lower development costs, wireless broadband, computer vision, machine learning and user interfaces.
The Extended Reality Technology Center (XRTC) is a consortium of CMU faculty and partners from sectors including technology, health, entertainment, transportation, infrastructure and government. XRTC leverages CMU’s expertise to boost research and development of augmented and virtual reality technologies, catalyzing their adoption in industry and society at large. Key applications include health care, industrial training, entertainment and communication.
About
Extended Reality Technology Center (XRTC) sees Extended Reality as the core paradigm in which future societies will communicate, interact and transact. XR includes any technology that allows for the information transfer between the physical and digital worlds, including augmented reality, virtual reality and mixed reality.
XRTC has three main components: Research, Education and Community.
The research thrust brings together more than 250 faculty from multiple disciplines to tackle new topics in XR. The education thrust focuses on developing a new educational curriculum at all levels including undergraduate, graduate and general workforce development. The community thrust focuses on bringing new technology to the public’s attention to encourage adoption and participatory design.
Future Facilities
The Extended Reality Technology Center will be housed in the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Innovation Center (RIC) at Hazelwood Green, opening 2025/2026. We rely on four main parts of infrastructure: large-scale capture space (LSCS), immersive experience studio (IXS), XR pods and visitor space. We will have two sets of LCSCs and IXSs. The first set serves applied usage to develop applications and explore the boundaries of currently available XR technologies. The second set serves our research purposes, specifically the development of novel technologies to push those boundaries further. The LCSC and IXS will be available to the CMU community and XRTC partners.
Large-scale Capture Space
The large-scale capture space (LSCS) will be an area of 50’ x 50’ x 20’, surrounded by a truss system. It will be equipped with state-of-the-art sensing for digitizing humans and the environment. The size will enable the development of novel technological approaches for sensing crowds and individual users, and a variety of motion ranges, from slow walking to sprints.
Immersive Experience Studio
The immersive experience studio (IXS) will be a space of 15’ x 15’ x 15’ and feature a 360-degree or dome-shaped LED wall, as used for virtual production. Additionally, the space will be equipped with sensing approaches for digitizing humans and objects.
XR Pods
The XR Pods are a series of small flexible rooms that include commercially available XR hardware (displays, controllers, trackers) and research prototypes, as well as computers and hardware such as lights and sound systems to simulate various environments. These flexible spaces will be used by researchers and students.
Visitor Center
The Visitor Center will house demonstrations of developed technologies. This space will also be used for workshops as well as other types of community outreach.