TagAlong: Informal Learning from a Remote Companion with Mobile Perspective Sharing

Questions often arise spontaneously in a curious mind, due to an observation about a new or unknown environment. When an expert is right there, prepared to engage in dialog, this curiosity can be harnessed and converted into highly effective, intrinsically motivated learning. This paper investigates how this kind of situated informal learning can be realized in real-world settings with wearable technologies and the support of a remote learning companion. In particular, we seek to understand how the use of different multimedia communication mediums impacts the quality of the interaction with a remote teacher, and how these remote interactions compare with face-to-face, co-present learning. A prototype system called TagAlong was developed with attention to features that facilitate dialog based on the visual environment. It was developed to work robustly in the wild, depending only on widely-available components and infrastructure. A pilot study was performed to learn about what characteristics are most important for successful interactions, as a basis for further system development and a future full-scale study. We conclude that it is critical for system design to be informed by (i) an analysis of the attentional burdens imposed by the system on both wearer and companion and (ii) a knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of co-present learning.Google Inc. Faculty Research Awar

A multi-user collaborative BIM-AR system to support design and construction

This is an accepted manuscript of an article published by Elsevier in Automation in Construction on 29/11/2020, available online: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.autcon.2020.103487 The accepted version of the publication may differ from the final published version.Augmented Reality (AR) is fast becoming an established tool for the construction industry. Previous research reports on the conversion of BIM geometric models and the implementation of these with marker-based AR, or the use of more wide area AR taking positional input from GPS. Much of this focused on the use of AR in an individual context, so there is need to align AR with the more collaborative nature of BIM. By implementing marker-based AR, and connecting to a cloud-based database, the presented BIM-AR system provides the ability to view, interact and collaborate with 3D and 2D BIM data via AR with geographically dispersed teams. An Agile Scrum Method was used to develop the prototype system including a mobile AR application and a Large Touch Screen application based on and a Model, View, Controller (MVC) approach. Finally, the system was tested and verified using a focus group of construction practitioners.Accepted versio

On Inter-referential Awareness in Collaborative Augmented Reality

For successful collaboration to occur, a workspace must support inter-referential awareness - or the ability for one participant to refer to a set of artifacts in the environment, and for that reference to be correctly interpreted by others. While referring to objects in our everyday environment is a straight-forward task, the non-tangible nature of digital artifacts presents us with new interaction challenges. Augmented reality (AR) is inextricably linked to the physical world, and it is natural to believe that the re-integration of physical artifacts into the workspace makes referencing tasks easier; however, we find that these environments combine the referencing challenges from several computing disciplines, which compound across scenarios. This dissertation presents our studies of this form of awareness in collaborative AR environments. It stems from our research in developing mixed reality environments for molecular modeling, where we explored spatial and multi-modal referencing techniques. To encapsulate the myriad of factors found in collaborative AR, we present a generic, theoretical framework and apply it to analyze this domain. Because referencing is a very human-centric activity, we present the results of an exploratory study which examines the behaviors of participants and how they generate references to physical and virtual content in co-located and remote scenarios; we found that participants refer to content using physical and virtual techniques, and that shared video is highly effective in disambiguating references in remote environments. By implementing user feedback from this study, a follow-up study explores how the environment can passively support referencing, where we discovered the role that virtual referencing plays during collaboration. A third study was conducted in order to better understand the effectiveness of giving and interpreting references using a virtual pointer; the results suggest the need for participants to be parallel with the arrow vector (strengthening the argument for shared viewpoints), as well as the importance of shadows in non-stereoscopic environments. Our contributions include a framework for analyzing the domain of inter-referential awareness, the development of novel referencing techniques, the presentation and analysis of our findings from multiple user studies, and a set of guidelines to help designers support this form of awareness

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) is a natural development from virtual reality (VR), which was developed several decades earlier. AR complements VR in many ways. Due to the advantages of the user being able to see both the real and virtual objects simultaneously, AR is far more intuitive, but it's not completely detached from human factors and other restrictions. AR doesn't consume as much time and effort in the applications because it's not required to construct the entire virtual scene and the environment. In this book, several new and emerging application areas of AR are presented and divided into three sections. The first section contains applications in outdoor and mobile AR, such as construction, restoration, security and surveillance. The second section deals with AR in medical, biological, and human bodies. The third and final section contains a number of new and useful applications in daily living and learning

Supporting Multi-User Interaction in Co-Located and Remote Augmented Reality by Improving Reference Performance and Decreasing Physical Interference

One of the most fundamental components of our daily lives is social interaction, ranging from simple activities, such as purchasing a donut in a bakery on the way to work, to complex ones, such as instructing a remote colleague how to repair a broken automobile. While we interact with others, various challenges may arise, such as miscommunication or physical interference. In a bakery, a clerk may misunderstand the donut at which a customer was pointing due to the uncertainty of their finger direction. In a repair task, a technician may remove the wrong bolt and accidentally hit another user while replacing broken parts due to unclear instructions and lack of attention while communicating with a remote advisor. This dissertation explores techniques for supporting multi-user 3D interaction in augmented reality in a way that addresses these challenges. Augmented Reality (AR) refers to interactively overlaying geometrically registered virtual media on the real world. In particular, we address how an AR system can use overlaid graphics to assist users in referencing local objects accurately and remote objects efficiently, and prevent co-located users from physically interfering with each other. My thesis is that our techniques can provide more accurate referencing for co-located and efficient referencing for remote users and lessen interference among users. First, we present and evaluate an AR referencing technique for shared environments that is designed to improve the accuracy with which one user (the indicator) can point out a real physical object to another user (the recipient). Our technique is intended for use in otherwise unmodeled environments in which objects in the environment, and the hand of the indicator, are interactively observed by a depth camera, and both users wear tracked see-through displays. This technique allows the indicator to bring a copy of a portion of the physical environment closer and indicate a selection in the copy. At the same time, the recipient gets to see the indicator's live interaction represented virtually in another copy that is brought closer to the recipient, and is also shown the mapping between their copy and the actual portion of the physical environment. A formal user study confirms that our technique performs significantly more accurately than comparison techniques in situations in which the participating users have sufficiently different views of the scene. Second, we extend the idea of using a copy (virtual replica) of physical object to help a remote expert assist a local user in performing a task in the local user's environment. We develop an approach that uses Virtual Reality (VR) or AR for the remote expert, and AR for the local user. It allows the expert to create and manipulate virtual replicas of physical objects in the local environment to refer to parts of those physical objects and to indicate actions on them. The expert demonstrates actions in 3D by manipulating virtual replicas, supported by constraints and annotations. We performed a user study of a 6DOF alignment task, a key operation in many physical task domains. We compared our approach with another 3D approach that also uses virtual replicas, in which the remote expert identifies corresponding pairs of points to align on a pair of objects, and a 2D approach in which the expert uses a 2D tablet-based drawing system similar to sketching systems developed for prior work by others on remote assistance. The study shows the 3D demonstration approach to be faster than the others. Third, we present an interference avoidance technique (Redirected Motion) intended to lessen the chance of physical interference among users with tracked hand-held displays, while minimizing their awareness that the technique is being applied. This interaction technique warps virtual space by shifting the virtual location of a user's hand-held display. We conducted a formal user study to evaluate Redirected Motion against other approaches that either modify what a user sees or hears, or restrict the interaction capabilities users have. Our study was performed using a game we developed, in which two players moved their hand-held displays rapidly in the space around a shared gameboard. Our analysis showed that Redirected Motion effectively and imperceptibly kept players further apart physically than the other techniques. These interaction techniques were implemented using an extensible programming framework we developed for supporting a broad range of multi-user immersive AR applications. This framework, Goblin XNA, integrates a 3D scene graph with support for 6DOF tracking, rigid body physics simulation, networking, shaders, particle systems, and 2D user interface primitives. In summary, we showed that our referencing approaches can enhance multi-user AR by improving accuracy for co-located users and increasing efficiency for remote users. In addition, we demonstrated that our interference-avoidance approach can lessen the chance of unwanted physical interference between co-located users, without their being aware of its use