Objective 1 – Definition of needs and technical requirements of the involved companies:
The tool to be developed must meet the requirements of the users, namely the exhibition organizing companies, the exhibitors, and the visitors. These requirements will also determine the platform’s technological specifications. The platform must also be capable of covering the needs of institutional exhibitors—such as Ministries, Regions, and Chambers—that promote domestic products. Organizers and exhibitors should receive detailed data regarding the number of virtual visitors to a booth and other related statistics, such as visit duration, amount of information received by visitors, and number of re-visits.
Objective 2 – Technical design and implementation of the platform:
This constitutes the main objective of the project, namely the design and development of a web-based platform that will cover the requirements defined in Objective 1. Organizers, together with exhibitors, should be able to intervene in the booth composition to avoid communication frictions that increase construction costs. Visiting a booth should be extended through Virtual Reality capabilities so that visitors receive enriched information, e.g., through teleportation to other spaces such as a factory, outdoors, shop, showroom, etc.
Objective 3 – Pilot execution and evaluation:
This objective concerns the construction of a commercial exhibition in virtual reality using the VRExpo platform, where stakeholders will test the experience of designing and/or visiting. The platform will then be evaluated against various criteria, e.g., quality of experience or user interface friendliness, which will yield useful conclusions for further improvements.
Objective 4 – Dissemination and commercial exploitation of the platform:
This objective includes actions that will increase project publicity, such as the construction of the project website and its promotion on social media. It also includes the elaboration of a commercial exploitation plan (business plan) for the platform, with the ultimate goal of initiating a collaboration between CERTH* and TETRAGON that strengthens TETRAGON in providing electronic services to its clients.