The Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) Metaverse Graduate School, now in its fifth year since establishment, will unveil its core research achievements at the Korea Metaverse Festival (KMF) 2026.
KAIST said Monday that it will participate in KMF 2026, held at COEX in Seoul from the 10th to the 12th of this month, to present research outcomes in the fields of next-generation Spatial AI and Extended Reality (XR).
Spatial AI refers to technology that recognizes and understands physical spaces and analyzes the positions and movements of people and objects to enable interaction. XR, which encompasses virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), refers to all technologies that blur the boundary between reality and the virtual, allowing users to experience space. If Spatial AI is the "brain that understands space," XR serves as the "eyes and screen" that display that space.
The KAIST Metaverse Graduate School was established in 2022 as part of the Virtual Convergence Graduate School Program promoted by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Institute of Information & Communications Technology Planning & Evaluation (IITP). It has been training master's and doctoral-level specialists in future core fields such as XR, digital twins, and spatial computing. Notably, this year the school presented 12 oral papers at IEEE VR 2026, the world's most prestigious VR academic conference — the second-highest number among global universities and research institutions — demonstrating top-tier global research competitiveness.
At KMF 2026, the school plans to present key achievements and conduct demonstrations of core technologies, focusing on next-generation immersive interaction technologies and industry-oriented digital twin case studies.
Representative technologies to be unveiled at the "2026 Virtual Convergence Innovation Talent Symposium and Performance Sharing Session" on the 10th, the first day of the event, include the real-time avatar facial expression reproduction system (OFERA), underwater immersive haptic interaction (Aqua Haptics), and multi-sensor-based cultural heritage digital twin and AR visualization technology.
OFERA is a technology that naturally renders facial expressions hidden when wearing XR devices, enhancing immersion in remote meetings and virtual collaboration. Aqua Haptics conveys water resistance and tactile sensations in virtual underwater environments through the fingertips, while the cultural heritage digital twin aims to enable internal defects of cultural heritage to be examined in 3D and AR.
In addition, research results will be shared on tactile feedback technology for bare-hand XR interaction using smartwatches, as well as XR "Force Control," which utilizes the force of users' hand movements to intuitively select and manipulate desired objects in virtual space.
Beyond developing XR technologies and individual content, the KAIST Metaverse Graduate School also plans to build a platform that accumulates and shares XR experience data, and apply it to actual urban and cultural metaverse content.
In this regard, the school is currently building the "Beyond Time and Space (BTS) Virtual Convergence Platform," which shares XR experience and interaction data, centered on the Post-Metaverse Research Center (PMRC). It is also jointly developing an "XR Experience Sharing Platform" with domestic and international research institutions. Later this year, the school plans to conduct a demonstration of the "New Jam Daejeon" project, which combines K-culture with XR technology.
"Spatial AI and XR will become the core infrastructure of the future virtual convergence industry," Woontack Woo, dean of the Metaverse Graduate School, said. "Based on world-class research achievements, KAIST will create substantive innovation by linking the 'assetization of XR experiences and knowledge' with the virtual convergence industry."
