psiUnity: A Platform for Multimodal Data-Driven XR

TL;DR

psiUnity is an open-source platform that integrates the Platform for Situated Intelligence with Unity, enabling real-time, synchronized multimodal data streaming for XR applications on HoloLens 2.

Contribution

It provides the first seamless integration of psi's data management and synchronization capabilities within Unity for HoloLens 2 development.

Findings

Enables bidirectional real-time multimodal data streaming with microsecond precision.

Extends psi's capabilities to Unity and HoloLens 2, supporting reproducible XR experiments.

Open-source availability facilitates adoption by HRI, HCI, and AI communities.

Abstract

Extended reality (XR) research increasingly relies on the ability to stream and synchronize multimodal data between headsets and immersive applications for data-driven interaction and experimentation. However, developers face a critical gap: the Platform for Situated Intelligence (psi), which excels at deterministic temporal alignment and multimodal data management, has been largely inaccessible to the dominant Unity/MRTK ecosystem used for HoloLens development. We introduce psiUnity, an open-source C# integration that bridges psi's .NET libraries with Unity 2022.3 and MRTK3 for HoloLens 2. psiUnity enables bidirectional, real-time streaming of head pose, hand tracking, gaze, IMU, audio, and depth sensor data (AHAT and long-throw) with microsecond-level temporal precision, allowing Unity applications to both consume and produce synchronized multimodal data streams. By embedding psi's native serialization, logging, and temporal coordination directly within Unity's architecture, psiUnity extends psi beyond its previous StereoKit limitations and empowers the HRI, HCI, and embodied-AI communities to develop reproducible, data-driven XR interactions and experiments within the familiar Unity environment. The integration is available at https://github.com/sailgt/psiUnity.