Overview of open source augmented reality toolkit

Augmented reality or also known as AR is not a new technology. The technology has existed for almost 40 years ago after Ivan Sutherland introduced the first virtual reality (VR) application. At that time, works and research were mainly concerned to establish the hardware aspects of the technology. The head-mounted display (HMD) or some might called head-worn display is the result of augmented reality research and also one of the fundamental equipment for accessing the technology. As time goes by, the augmented reality technology has begin to mature to a point where the hardware cost and capabilities have collided to deliver a more feasible AR thus enable the rapid development of AR applications in many fields including education. To create a non-commercial AR application specifically for education, the ARToolkit can be taken into consideration. ARToolkit is the product of AR community and it is registered under the GNU General Public License. The user is provided with basic source code that lets the user easily develop Augmented Reality applications. Despite the fact that AR is not a new technology, people may unaware or unfamiliar with its existence. Therefore this paper is intended to (1) give an overview of augmented reality; and provides (2) solution to the technical problems that one’s will face in setting up open-source augmented reality toolkit

Smartphone Augmented Reality Applications for Tourism

Invisible, attentive and adaptive technologies that provide tourists with relevant services and information anytime and anywhere may no longer be a vision from the future. The new display paradigm, stemming from the synergy of new mobile devices, context-awareness and AR, has the potential to enhance tourists’ experiences and make them exceptional. However, effective and usable design is still in its infancy. In this publication we present an overview of current smartphone AR applications outlining tourism-related domain-specific design challenges. This study is part of an ongoing research project aiming at developing a better understanding of the design space for smartphone context-aware AR applications for tourists

Ultrathin, polarization-independent, and focus-tunable liquid crystal diffractive lens for augmented reality

Despite the recent advances in augmented reality (AR), which has shown the potential to significantly impact on our daily lives by offering a new way to manipulate and interact with virtual information, minimizing visual discomfort due to the vergence-accommodation conflict remains a challenge. Emerging AR technologies often exploit focus-tunable optics to address this problem. Although they demonstrated improved depth perception by enabling proper focus cues, a bulky form factor of focus-tunable optics prevents their use in the form of a pair of eyeglasses. Herein, we describe an ultrathin, focus-tunable liquid crystal (LC) diffractive lens with a large aperture, a low weight, and a low operating voltage. In addition, we show that the polarization dependence of the lens, which is an inherent optical property of LC lenses, can be eliminated using birefringent thin films as substrates and by aligning the optical axes of the birefringent substrates and LC at a specific angle. The polarization independence eliminates the need for a polarizer, thus further reducing the form factor of the optical system. Next, we demonstrate a prototype of AR glasses with addressable focal planes using the ultrathin lens. The prototype AR glasses can adjust the accommodation distance of the virtual image, mitigating the vergence-accommodation conflict without substantially compromising the form factor or image quality. This research on ultrathin lens technology shows promising potential for developing compact optical displays in various applications.Comment: 23 pages, 9 figure

Augmented reality marketing: a technology-enabled approach to situated customer experience

Recent advances in Augmented Reality (AR) technologies have led to a growing interest in their application for marketing strategy and practice – what we term Augmented Reality Marketing (ARM). However, despite emerging publications on the subject, managers and academics struggle to articulate how ARM delivers experiences that are valuable to customers in a way that is different from other marketing approaches. In this article, we review the emerging literature, and define ARM as a customer-facing interface for the application of digital marketing technologies in physical settings. Rooted in a class of ‘situated cognition’ theories from social psychology, we identify a unique set of digital affordances which ARM offers beyond extant marketing approaches in traditional media. By drawing on the key conceptual building blocks of situated cognition theory, we develop a framework of ARM experiences to synthesize current research and applications, and to suggest directions for future research

SIMNET: simulation-based exercises for computer net-work curriculum through gamification and augmented reality

Gamification and Augmented Reality techniques, in recent years, have tackled many subjects and environments. Its implementation can, in particular, strengthen teaching and learning processes in schools and universities. Therefore, new forms of knowledge, based on interactions with objects, contributing game, experimentation and collaborative work. Through the technologies mentioned above, we intend to develop an application that serves as a didactic tool, giving support in the area of Computer Networks. This application aims to stand out in simulated controlled environments to create computer networks, taking into ac-count the necessary physical devices and the different physical and logical topologies. The main goal is to enrich the students’ learning experiences and contrib-ute to teacher-student interaction, through collaborative learning provided by the tool, minimizing the need for expensive equipment in learning environments.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Research Travelogue on Applications of Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) is an interactive experience of a real-world environment where the objects that reside in the real world are enhanced by computer-generated perceptual information, sometimes across multiple sensory modalities, including visual, auditory, haptic, somatosensory and olfactory.AR can be defined as a system that incorporates three basic features: a combination of real and virtual worlds, real-time interaction, and accurate 3D registration of virtual and real objects. This paper aims to provide an overview of current technologies and implementations of augmented reality as well as to describe the main application domains and outlining benefits. It also briefly describes about the powerful real time implementations of augmented reality and also its benefits

Spatial calibration of an optical see-through head-mounted display

We present here a method for calibrating an optical see-through Head Mounted Display (HMD) using techniques usually applied to camera calibration (photogrammetry). Using a camera placed inside the HMD to take pictures simultaneously of a tracked object and features in the HMD display, we could exploit established camera calibration techniques to recover both the intrinsic and extrinsic properties of the~HMD (width, height, focal length, optic centre and principal ray of the display). Our method gives low re-projection errors and, unlike existing methods, involves no time-consuming and error-prone human measurements, nor any prior estimates about the HMD geometry

Increasing robot autonomy via motion planning and an augmented reality interface

Recently, there has been a growing interest in robotic systems that are able to share workspaces and collabo- rate with humans. Such collaborative scenarios require efficient mechanisms to communicate human requests to a robot, as well as to transmit robot interpretations and intents to humans. Recent advances in augmented reality (AR) technologies have provided an alternative for such communication. Nonetheless, most of the existing work in human-robot interaction with AR devices is still limited to robot motion programming or teleoperation. In this paper, we present an alternative approach to command and collaborate with robots. Our approach uses an AR interface that allows a user to specify high-level requests to a robot, to preview, approve or modify the computed robot motions. The proposed approach exploits the robot’s decision- making capabilities instead of requiring low-level motion spec- ifications provided by the user. The latter is achieved by using a motion planner that can deal with high-level goals corresponding to regions in the robot configuration space. We present a proof of concept to validate our approach in different test scenarios, and we present a discussion of its applicability in collaborative environments