IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - May/June 2023 - 18

Metaverse
FIGURE 1. Interconnected metaverse systems with seamless experiences for users.
programming interface. According to Deloitte's
report,1 it is expected that thedistributed metaverse
systems will gradually share data and establish unified
standards across platforms, thus achieving full
integration in the mature stage.
METAVERSE-CE TAXONOMY
The metaverse requires consumer electronics
(CE) to measure users' interaction information and
meanwhile create an immersive environment with
multimodality. Additionally, the consumer electronics
take the users in the metaverse to experience a
newvirtual life with otherpeers asshown inFigure 2.
There are a few key technology pillars that support
themetaverse in the virtual world2 as the following:
Sensing, Actuating: To create a fully immersive
metaverse environment, various kinds of sensory
measurements are made, such as binocular
stereo scenes computed by camera
transformations. Furthermore, different kinds of
actuator actions are generated, such as interaction
forces calculated by a physics engine.
Representation, Assets: High-fidelity virtual
scenes and customized avatars are rendered
and displayed in 3D. In addition, digital assets
authenticatedbyNFT(non-fungible token), a digital
collectible asanexample, arealso included.
Artificial Intelligence: It enables the metaverse
to be self-cognitive, such as interactively talking
withusers bynatural language processing, effectively
engaging with users by making inferences
fromusers' behaviors, etc.
Blockchain, Cybersecurity: The virtual metaverse
requires privacy protection, encryption, and
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authentication to protect users from cyberattacks.
In addition, blockchain as a decentralized
ledger would keep all critical transactions
safely recorded.
To enable the users immersively interact in the
metaverse, consumer electronics usemanydifferent
ways to strengthen the sense of reality, including:
1) Vision, Sound, Haptics, Smell, Taste:The users
look at binocular 3D high-resolution displays by
an eXtended reality headset or a smartphone.3
Broader field of view (130 horizontally by 100
vertically or even 200 by 130), higher resolution
(4K or even 8K), and higher refresh rate (90
fps or even 120 fps) provide a natural view to
the users. Spatial audio enriches the 3D surround
sound experience of sonic changes with
the movement of the head. Haptic vest and haptic
gloves enable the users to feel the stiffness
and even texture of a virtual object in the metaverse.
The electrical generator or simulator of
smell and taste could further enhance the ultimate
immersion experience.
2) Voice, Gesture:Multichannelmicrophone array
makes the users' voice input clear enough, followed
by speech recognition. Users' gesture
vocabularies are recognized by a set of RGB-D
cameras.
Between the metaverse and users, the Web
3.0 network4 transmits the datagrams between
the virtual and real world with ultra-low end-toend
latency (ideally less than 7 ms), including:
1) Downlink Traffic: Mainly the rendered virtual
environment frames from the metaverse
IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine
IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine - May/June 2023

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