Augmented Reality in Astrophysics

Augmented Reality consists of merging live images with virtual layers of information. The rapid growth in the popularity of smartphones and tablets over recent years has provided a large base of potential users of Augmented Reality technology, and virtual layers of information can now be attached to a wide variety of physical objects. In this article, we explore the potential of Augmented Reality for astrophysical research with two distinct experiments: (1) Augmented Posters and (2) Augmented Articles. We demonstrate that the emerging technology of Augmented Reality can already be used and implemented without expert knowledge using currently available apps. Our experiments highlight the potential of Augmented Reality to improve the communication of scientific results in the field of astrophysics. We also present feedback gathered from the Australian astrophysics community that reveals evidence of some interest in this technology by astronomers who experimented with Augmented Posters. In addition, we discuss possible future trends for Augmented Reality applications in astrophysics, and explore the current limitations associated with the technology. This Augmented Article, the first of its kind, is designed to allow the reader to directly experiment with this technology.Comment: 15 pages, 11 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap&SS. The final publication will be available at link.springer.co

Intelligent Agent Modeling as Serious Game (extended abstract)

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A Survey of Augmented Reality Technologies, Applications and Limitations

International audienceWe are on the verge of ubiquitously adoptingAugmented Reality (AR) technologies to enhance our perceptionand help us see, hear, and feel our environments in new andenriched ways. AR will support us in fields such as education,maintenance, design and reconnaissance, to name but a few.This paper describes the field of AR, including a brief definitionand development history, the enabling technologies and theircharacteristics. It surveys the state of the art by reviewing somerecent applications of AR technology as well as some knownlimitations regarding human factors in the use of AR systemsthat developers will need to overcome

User-Defined Gestures for Augmented Reality

Abstract. Recently there has been an increase in research towards using hand gestures for interaction in the field of Augmented Reality (AR). These works have primarily focused on researcher designed gestures, while little is known about user preference and behavior for gestures in AR. In this paper, we present our guessability study for hand gestures in AR in which 800 gestures were elicited for 40 selected tasks from 20 participants. Using the agreement found among gestures, a user-defined gesture set was created to guide designers to achieve consistent user-centered gestures in AR. Wobbrock’s surface taxonomy has been extended to cover dimensionalities in AR and with it, characteristics of collected gestures have been derived. Common motifs which arose from the empirical findings were applied to obtain a better understanding of users’ thought and behavior. This work aims to lead to consistent user-centered designed gestures in AR