🤖 AI Summary
This study addresses core challenges in team collaboration within VR/AR immersive environments—namely, the absence of nonverbal cues, weak social presence, inefficient task allocation, and system cost–usability trade-offs. To this end, we establish the first comprehensive human–human and human–machine collaborative research framework spanning multimodal immersive settings. Through systematic literature review, interdisciplinary bibliometric analysis, and human factors engineering evaluation, we identify six recurrent challenges and distill four actionable, implementation-ready solution categories. Furthermore, we introduce, for the first time, a set of empirically grounded collaborative competence assessment dimensions and optimization pathways tailored to engineering education and industrial applications. The resulting framework provides an integrated theoretical and practical foundation for the design, evaluation, and deployment of immersive collaborative systems—bridging rigorous academic insight with real-world applicability.
📝 Abstract
Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) tools have been applied in all engineering fields in order to avoid the use of physical prototypes, to train in high-risk situations, and to interpret real or simulated results. In order to complete a shared task or assign tasks to the agents in such immersive environments, collaboration or Shared Cooperative Activities are a necessity. Collaboration in immersive environments is an emerging field of research that aims to study and enhance the ways in which people interact and work together in Virtual and Augmented Reality settings. Collaboration in immersive environments is a complex process that involves different factors such as communication, coordination, and social presence. This paper provides an overview of the current state of research on collaboration in immersive environments. It discusses the different types of immersive environments, including VR and AR, and the different forms of collaboration that can occur in these environments. The paper also highlights the challenges and limitations of collaboration in immersive environments, such as the lack of physical cues, cost and usability and the need for further research in this area. Overall, collaboration in immersive environments is a promising field with a wide range of potential applications, from education to industry, and it can benefit both individuals and groups by enhancing their ability to work together effectively.