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HES-SO Valais-Wallis · Institute of Informatics

Applied Interactive Technologies Lab

We combine extended reality with artificial intelligence and computer vision to build interactive systems that perceive, understand and respond to people in real time, and we take them out of the lab into healthcare, education, inclusion and industry.

WhereSierre, Switzerland FocusXR · AI · Computer vision ForHealth · Training · Inclusion · Industry
See our projects Work with us
About

Who we are

AppiTech (Applied Interactive Technologies) is a research group of the Institute of Informatics at HES-SO Valais-Wallis, led by Prof. Antoine Widmer. We design immersive and intelligent systems (mixed and virtual reality, conversational avatars, body and gaze sensing) and evaluate them with the people who will use them: therapists, clinicians, teachers, students and patients.

We work in close collaboration with clinical, academic and industrial partners in Switzerland and Europe. Our projects run from co-design to field studies, and we build the open tools we need to measure what happens inside an immersive experience.

Human-centred

People stay in control: systems are co-designed with practitioners and evaluated in real settings.

Applied

From prototype to deployment on standalone headsets, in the browser, in the clinic and on the shop floor.

Open and sovereign

Self-hosted, open-source infrastructure where possible, so sensitive data stays under control.

Research

Five research areas

Our work sits where extended reality meets AI agents that can perceive, reason, converse and act, while keeping people in control. It is organised around five interconnected areas.

Area 01

Conversational and embodied AI agents in XR

Avatars and personas that listen, speak and act in mixed reality and in the browser, powered by speech and language models with full-duplex voice.

  • Conversational avatars
  • Full-duplex voice
  • LLM personas
  • Agent actions
Area 02

Perception: computer vision and body sensing

Understanding people, tasks and spaces in real time: body-worn cameras that follow a task as it is performed, gaze, room scanning and event-based sensing.

  • Body-worn cameras
  • Room scanning
  • Eye tracking
  • Event-based vision
Area 03

Therapeutic and social immersive experiences

Mixed-reality and social-VR environments for therapy and prevention, designed with clinicians for children, adults and seniors.

  • Mixed reality
  • Social VR
  • Co-design
  • Mental health
Area 04

Immersive data and evaluation

Capturing what happens during an XR session (events, positions, gaze, conversations) to evaluate experiences and adapt them, with open tooling.

  • XR telemetry
  • Session replay
  • Learning analytics
  • Open source
Area 05

Applications and societal impact

Bringing these systems to healthcare, health education, inclusion and industry, with attention to privacy, data sovereignty, accessibility and multilingual use.

  • Healthcare
  • Health education
  • Inclusion
  • Industry
  • Privacy
Projects

Research projects

A selection of the projects we lead or contribute to.

THCS · EU co-funded Ongoing Mental health

IPC4MH – Immersive Prevention Centers for Mental Health

2025– · Coordinated by HES-SO Valais-Wallis · Sierre, Nantes, Warsaw

Immersive prevention centres that combine supervised group sessions in social VR with guided exercises at home, for two groups: young people with neurodevelopmental disorders and seniors with depressive or cognitive frailty. With Nantes Université (LS2N), CHU Nantes, the Institute of Psychology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, C2Care and DiverSSity.

Details →Project website →
Innosuisse Ongoing Neurodevelopment

DiverSSity – Mixed-reality therapy for children

With DiverSSity SA, Clinique Dis7, EDHEA and the HES-SO Valais-Wallis Living Lab

A mixed-reality therapeutic platform for children with autism spectrum disorder or ADHD on Meta Quest: a magic garden, an aquarium, a fruit-slicing game, a party and a Snoezelen calming room, with a voiced gardener character who talks with the child.

Details →Partner website →
Innosuisse Ongoing Inclusion

XR4Inclusion – Rehearsing work situations in XR

With Orif and the Haute École de Travail Social (HETS), HES-SO Valais-Wallis

Extended-reality simulations of work situations, such as a coffee break or a job interview, co-designed for young people on the autism spectrum. They talk by voice with expressive 3D characters and get feedback at the end.

Details →
Innosuisse Ongoing Industry

AI guidance for industrial workers

With RimonTech, Zurich

An AI-based system that guides industrial workers step by step, in real time, through smart body cameras. It detects errors automatically, reduces downtime, and helps carry out complex tasks safely and efficiently.

Details →
In use Health education

CareConverse – Conversation practice with AI personas

Web platform · Started as a Bachelor thesis at HES-SO Valais-Wallis

Health students practise difficult conversations by voice with an AI-played patient or relative. Teachers write the scenarios without code; the platform follows the learning objectives live and gives feedback. Scenarios run in French, German and English, with speech in Swiss German, and in group scenes.

Details →Open the platform →
Prototype Embodied agents

Greta – A conversational avatar across realities

Mixed reality (Meta Quest, PICO), browser and Godot

Greta, the gardener from DiverSSity, as a voice-driven avatar that converses in passthrough mixed reality and in the browser. It is our test bed for speech, expressive read-aloud and avatar actions, and it can present the lab itself.

Details →Talk to Greta →
Open source · AGPL-3.0 Ongoing Research tooling

XRXP – Experiment tracking for XR

Created by Nantes Université · our custom version

An open-source platform for recording and analysing XR experiments. We run a custom version that adds a live headset view, room scans with body trails, and progress views for professionals. It logs the sessions of our own projects.

Details →Documentation →
People

Team

Portrait of Antoine Widmer

Prof. Dr. Antoine Widmer

Professor of Computer Science · Head of AppiTech

His research combines immersive technologies with AI and computer vision to build interactive systems that understand and respond to human behaviour in real time, for healthcare, training and industry.

  • Extended reality
  • Human-centred AI
  • Computer vision
  • AI for mental health

Noah Richert

PhD student · MR & computer vision engineer

Works on immersive data for mental-health prevention and on mixed-reality development.

Valentin Pasquier

Mixed-reality developer

Develops XR4Inclusion and the lab's other mixed-reality projects.

Maxvell Arulraj

Computer vision engineer

Works on industrial projects that use computer vision to help workers perform their tasks.

Publications

Recent publications

  1. Immersive Prevention Centers for Mental Health: Secondary and Tertiary Prevention in the Metaverse
    A. Widmer, S. Bulteau, R. Malo, P. Matusz, N. Richert, J.-P. Rivière, P. Tomalski, Y. Prié
    II International Congress: Metaverse for the Good – II EMRN Conference, 2025
  2. Use of Immersive Data by Medical Practitioners for Mental Health Prevention
    N. Richert, A. Widmer, Y. Prié
    II International Congress: Metaverse for the Good – II EMRN Conference, 2025
Partners

We work with

Nantes Université – LS2N CHU Nantes Institute of Psychology, Polish Academy of Sciences C2Care DiverSSity SA Clinique Dis7 EDHEA Orif Haute École de Travail Social (HETS), HES-SO Valais-Wallis RimonTech Innosuisse
Contact

Work with us

We welcome collaborations with clinical, academic and industrial partners, as well as Bachelor, Master and PhD students interested in XR and AI.

AppiTech – Applied Interactive Technologies
Institute of Informatics, HES-SO Valais-Wallis
Sierre, Switzerland

antoine.widmer@hevs.ch