WORKSHOP ON VIRTUAL REALITY IN PRODUCT ENGINEERING AND ROBOTICS: TECHNOLOGY AND APPLICATIONS Special issue of: BULLETIN OF THE TRANSILVANIA UNIVERSITY OF BRAŞOV. ISSN 1221-5872 STRUCTURING THE EUROPEAN RESEARCH AREA IN VR – INTUITION NETWORK N.FRANGAKIS * , G. KARASEITANIDIS * , A. AMDITIS * , K. LOUPOS * Abstract: Virtual Reality as a technology has been long driven by advances in related Computer Sciences technologies. Having technologically matured within recent years it is increasingly used in several customised scenarios of various application domains, highlighting its advantages in most cases. To make best use of the technology it is time to identify the research challenges of tomorrow and build a roadmap to achieve them. The first and most impor- tant step is to gather and cluster relative knowledge scattered among differ- ent European labs and establish a firm networking and collaboration frame- work amongst them. The European funded Network of Excellence INTUITION addresses these issues and focuses on virtual reality and virtual environments applications aiming at bringing together leading experts and key actors across all major areas of VE understanding, development, testing and application in Europe. Keywords: Virtual Reality, INTUITION, Network of Excellence, European Research Area. * Institute of Communication and Computer Systems of the National Technical University of Ath- ens, 9, Iroon Polytechniou str., Athens, 15773, Greece. Tel: +30 210 7722398, Fax: + 30 210 7722291, Email: nikos@iccs.gr , gkara@iccs.gr , a.amditis@iccs.gr, kloupos@iccs.gr 1. Introduction Virtual Reality (VR) technology is the technology enabling the 3D representation of real or imaginative objects or worlds. As general this description might seem it might be even difficult to find an agree- ment on that statement. As Virtual Environments are linked with the sense of user “presence” within the virtual world and the feeling of immersion it is even difficult to define where the bor- der between VR technology and other Computer Science related technologies are. Regardless of this fact its main advantage of engaging multiple user senses in visual- ised scenarios has been appreciated and applied in different applications. Its ability to provide enhanced representations has been used in many applications dealing with engineering and design in several sec- tors. Advanced interaction techniques pro- vided in nowadays allow training/assembly scenarios in situations where safety is most appreciated to be easily conducted. Sense of joy associated to the “actual” user pres- ence in a “virtual” world has been the driv- ing force of VR in the entertainment indus-