AI-Assisted Extended Reality Toward the 6G Era

Extended reality (XR) technologies entails a group of innovative and immersive technologies such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and cinematic reality (CR), which bring physical objects into digital environments and take digital objects into physical reality. Recently, these technologies have undergone rapid development and are increasingly becoming ubiquitous in various sectors including healthcare, education, manufacturing, and military, among others. As the 5G era has united high bit rate, low latency, high-energy efficiency, increased availability, and intelligent networks, various opportunities involving XR technologies has emerged, which are also facilitated by advances in artificial intelligence. These developments are expected to strengthen toward the 6G era. On the other hand, different challenges can hinder the proliferation of these technologies toward 6G. This chapter addresses how AI-assisted XR technologies provide opportunities in the 56/6G era, while at the same time presenting the key challenges that are expected to hinder diffusion of such technologies. In addition, prospective solutions to these challenges will be discussed in order to envision the needs toward 6G.