Physically Grounded and Embodied Interaction in XR: Multimodal Sensing and Spatial Perception

The rapid evolution of Virtual and Mixed Reality technologies is enabling increasingly immersive applications across domains such as industrial design, training, and remote collaboration. However, a persistent challenge lies in ensuring a consistent and reliable alignment between physical and virtual environments. Current XR systems often exhibit discrepancies between sensed physical reality and virtual representations, affecting interaction fidelity and system robustness. Advances in multimodal perception, including computer vision, depth sensing, and other multimodal sensing approaches, combined with sensor fusion techniques, are opening new opportunities to bridge this gap. By enabling XR systems to capture, interpret, and maintain structured representations of the physical world, these approaches support more stable and context-aware interactions. Despite progress, key challenges remain in achieving accurate, scalable, and real-time grounding of XR experiences in dynamic real-world environments.This Research Topic focuses on physically grounded XR systems, in which interaction is supported by a consistent and measurable alignment between physical and virtual environments. The emphasis is on how multimodal sensing and perception pipelines enable XR systems to capture, interpret, and maintain correspondence with the physical world.We invite contributions investigating how XR systems can robustly integrate signals from users, objects, and environments, including motion, spatial structure, and contextual information, into coherent representations that support grounded interaction. Particular attention is given to sensor fusion, spatial mapping, and perception-driven system design that ensure stability, accuracy, and adaptability in real-world conditions.The topic also considers how physically grounded perception enables interaction in applied contexts, including industrial, training, and collaborative XR scenarios. By bringing together expertise from computer vision, human-computer interaction, artificial intelligence, and XR system design, this Research Topic aims to advance the development of XR technologies that are tightly coupled with the physical world.This Research Topic welcomes theoretical, methodological, and application-oriented contributions addressing the role of multimodal perception and sensing in enabling physically grounded XR systems.Relevant topics include, but are not limited to:• Multimodal sensing and sensor fusion for physical-virtual alignment• Spatial and contextual perception for grounded XR systems• Real-world mapping, anchoring, and environment integration in mixed reality• Calibration, synchronization, and robustness in physically grounded XR• Human motion and behavior understanding for grounded interaction• Interaction techniques enabled by perception-driven grounding• Evaluation methods for physically grounded XR in real-world scenarios• Applications of grounded XR in industrial, training, and design contexts.The primary focus is on perception-driven grounding and physical-virtual alignment. Contributions addressing user experience, social presence, or interaction design are welcome when clearly grounded in sensing and physical-virtual alignment mechanisms.We are interested in a variety of manuscript types, including Original Research, Review, Methods, and Perspective articles that contribute to the advancement of physically grounded XR systems. Topic editors: Beatrice Aruanno, Monica Bordegoni, Siyuan Huang Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/79919/physically-grounded-and-embodied-interaction-in-xr-multimodal-sensing-and-spatial-perception