Challenges in Metaverse Research: An Internet of Things Perspective

The paper describes research challenges arising from the increasing interest in supporting more immersive and more intelligent environments that enable the next generation of seamless human and physical interactions. These environments span the gamut from augmented-physical to virtual, and are referred to hereafter as the Metaverse. We focus on challenges that constitute a natural extension of Internet of Things (IoT) research. Among the key applications of IoT has always been the integration of physical and cyber environments to endow "things" with a better contextual understanding of their surroundings, and endow human users with more seamless means of perception and control, ranging from smart home automation to industrial applications. This IoT vision was based on the premise that the number of physical "things" on the Internet will soon significantly outpace humans. Intelligent IoT further envisions a proliferation of edge intelligence with which humans will interact. The paper elaborates the research challenges that extrapolate the above trajectory.