XR for Challenging Environments | Satellite Event of EuroXR 2026 & VWA Forum

About This Workshop

This is the second edition of the XR for Challenging Environments (XR4CE) workshop series, building directly on the successful CHI 2026 workshop in Barcelona. That first gathering brought together 22 position papers and a vibrant community spanning emergency response, aviation, healthcare, industrial operations, and military contexts.

The upcoming workshop in Valencia (Nov 3, 2026) will deepen that work. Extended Reality combined with Artificial Intelligence holds transformative potential for professionals in Challenging Environments (CEs) — contexts defined by complexity, risk, and unpredictability that push human decision-making to its limits. Yet research still struggles to meet the unique demands of embodied, mission-critical work.

Call for Participation

We invite researchers, practitioners, and domain experts to contribute to a cross-disciplinary community forum. Our goal is to map open problems, share field experience, and co-create a shared research agenda for the next generation of mission-critical XR.

Topics of Interest

We welcome submissions addressing XR and AI-based assistance and augmentation in challenging environments, including but not limited to:

Training-to-Operations Transfer: Conditions, barriers, and design approaches for moving XR from training contexts into live operational deployment.
Human-AI Collaboration: Teaming dynamics, role allocation, and interaction models for humans and AI agents working together in high-stakes environments.
Calibrated Trust: Methods for measuring, modeling, and supporting appropriate reliance on AI/XR systems under real-time stress.
Resilient Systems: Design patterns for graceful failure and robust interaction when systems are degraded or overloaded.
Situated Explanations: Multi-modal and embodied feedback for hands-free, high-cognitive-load contexts.
The Augmented Professional: Cognitive load, skill evolution, and human agency in mission-critical XR use.
Cross-Domain Collaboration: How communities of researchers and practitioners from different challenging domains can learn from each other.
Case Studies: Experiences and lessons learned from emergency response, industrial operations, healthcare, and other challenging environments.

Submission Details

We solicit 2–4 page position papers (excluding references). Submissions may present novel concepts, empirical findings, design provocations, or case studies. Practitioner contributions from the field are especially welcome.

Format: Submission format details will be announced with the opening of the submission system. We anticipate a standard short-paper format consistent with EuroXR publication guidelines.

Review Process: All submissions will be peer-reviewed (single-blind) by the organizers based on quality, relevance, and their potential to stimulate discussion.

Publication: With author consent, accepted papers will be published on this website. Open-access proceedings are planned (details TBA).

At least one author of each accepted submission must register for and attend the workshop in person to present their work.