Description:
Libraries use call numbers to organize their books and enable patrons to locate them. To keep the books in order, library workers conduct a time-consuming and tedious task called "shelf-reading." Workers look at the call numbers on the spines of each book in the library, one at a time, to make sure they are in the correct places. ShelvAR is an augmented reality shelf-reading system for smart phones that reduces time spent, increases accuracy, and produces an inventory of the books on their shelves as a byproduct. Shelf-reading requires rapid acquisition of many targets (books). Unlike many target acquisition tasks considered in the AR literature, the user is not trying to select a single target from among many. Instead, the user is trying to scan all of the targets, and must be able to easily double-check that none were missed. Our goal is to explore the usability of augmented reality applications for this type of "multiple target acquisition" task. We present the results of a pilot study on the effectiveness of ShelvAR. We demonstrate that individuals with no library experience are just as fast and accurate, when using ShelvAR, as experienced library workers at the shelf-reading task.

Description:
The confined space of a car and the configuration of its controls and displays towards the driver, offer significant advantages for Augmented Reality (AR) systems in terms of the immersion level provided to the user. In addition, the inherent mobility and virtually unlimited power autonomy transform cars into perfect mobile computing platforms. However, the limited network connectivity that is currently available in automobiles leads to the design of Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS) that create AR objects based only on the information generated by on-board sensors, stored maps and databases, and eventually high-latency online content for Internet-enabled vehicles. By combining the new paradigm of Vehicular Ad Hoc Networking (VANET) with AR human machine interfaces, we show that it is possible to design novel cooperative ADAS, that base the creation of AR content on the information collected from neighbouring vehicles or roadside infrastructures. We provide a prototype implementation of a visual AR system that can significantly improve the driving experience.

Description:
Although AR has a long history in the area of maintenance and service-support in industry, there still is a lack of lightweight, yet practical solutions for handheld AR systems in everyday workflows. Attempts to support complex maintenance tasks with AR still miss reliable tracking techniques, simple ways to be integrated into existing maintenance environments, and practical authoring solutions, which minimize costs for specialized content generation. We present a general, customisable application framework, allowing to employ AR and VR techniques in order to support technicians in their daily tasks. In contrast to other systems, we do not aim to replace existing support systems such as traditional manuals. Instead we integrate well-known AR- and novel presentation techniques with existing instruction media. To this end practical authoring solutions are crucial and hence we present an application development system based on web-standards such as HTML,CSS and X3D.

Description:
This paper proposes a new diminished reality method for 3D scenes considering background structures. Most conventional methods using image inpainting assumes that the background around a target object is almost planar. In this study, approximating the background structure by the combination of local planes, perspective distortion of texture is corrected and searching area is limited for improving the quality of image inpainting. The temporal coherence of texture is preserved using the estimated structures and camera pose estimated by Visual-SLAM.

Description:
Fiducial markers (AR/visual markers) are still useful tools in many AR/MR applications. But conventional markers have two fundamental problems in orientation estimation. One is degradation of orientation accuracy in frontal observation. The other is ``pose ambiguity" where the estimated orientation repeats switching between two values. We previously developed a novel marker ``ArrayMark" which uses a microlens array and solved the former problem. This time we propose a practical solution to the latter problem by improving the ArrayMark. We attach an additional reference point to detect the occurrence of invalid estimation, and modify the orientation of the marker by inverting the zenith-angle of the visual-line. This marker enables stable pose estimation from a one-shot image without using any filtering techniques. The method is applicable to conventional markers, too. We demonstrated the availability of this improvement to the pose-ambiguity problem.

Description:
With the increasing availability of sensors within smartphones and within the world at large, a question arises about how this sensor data can be leveraged by Augmented Reality (AR) devices. AR devices have traditionally been limited by the capability of a given device's unique set of sensors. Connecting sensors from multiple devices using a Sensor Web could address this problem. Through leveraging this Sensor Web existing AR environments could be improved and new scenarios made possible, with devices that previously could not have being used as part of an AR environment. This paper proposes the use of SIXTH: a middleware designed to generate a Sensor Web, which allows a device to leverage heterogeneous external sensors within its environment to help facilitate the creation of richer AR experiences. This paper will present a worst case scenario, in which the device chosen will be a see-through, Android-based Head Mounted Display that has no access to sensors. This device is transformed into an AR device through the creation of a Sensor Web allowing it to sense its environment facilitated through the use of SIXTH.

Description:
We introduce an in-situ lighting and reflectance estimation method that does not require specific light probes and/or preliminary scanning. Our method uses images taken from multiple viewpoints while data accumulation and lighting and reflectance estimations run in the background of the primary AR system. As a result, our method requires little in the way of manipulations for image collection because it consists primarily of image processing and optimization. When used, lighting directions and initial optimization values are estimated via image processing. Eventually, the full parameters are obtained by optimization of the differences between real images. This system uses current best parameters because the parameter estimation and input image updates are run independently.

Description:
Education of anatomy is a challenging but crucial element in educating medical professionals, but also for general education of pupils. Our research group has previously developed a prototype of an Augmented Reality (AR) magic mirror which allows intuitive visualization of realistic anatomical information on the user. However, the current overlay is imprecise as the magic mirror depends on the skeleton output from Kinect. These imprecisions affect the quality of education and learning. Hence, together with clinicians we have defined bone landmarks which users can touch easily on their body while standing in front of the sensor. We demonstrate that these landmarks allow the proper deformation of medical data within the magic mirror and onto the human body, resulting in a more precise augmentation.

Description:
Creating panoramic images in real-time is an expensive operation for mobile devices. Mapping of individual pixels into the panoramic image is the main focus of this paper, since it is one of the most time consuming parts. The pixel-mapping process is transferred from the Central Processing Unit (CPU) to the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU). The independence of pixels being projected allows OpenGL shaders to perform this operation very efficiently. We propose a shader-based mapping approach and confront it with an existing solution. The application is implemented for Android phones and works fluently on current generation devices.

Description:
This paper presents a study of a method for estimating the position and orientation of a photo-shoot in indoor environments for augmented reality applications. Our proposed localization method is based on registered frame data of virtualized reality models, which are photos with known photo-shoot positions and orientations, and depth data. Because registered frame data are secondary product of modeling process, additional works are not necessary to create registered frame data especially for the localization. In the method, a photo taken by a mobile camera is compared to registered frame data for the localization. Since registered frame data are linked with photo-shoot position, orientation, and depth data, 3D coordinates of each pixel on the photo of registered frame data is available. We conducted experiments with employing five techniques of the estimation for comparative evaluations.

Description:
We report an experiment related to perceiving (virtual) objects in the vicinity of (real) surfaces when using stereoscopic augmented reality displays. In particular, our goal was to explore the effect of various visual surface features on both perception of object location and perception of surface transparency. Surface features were manipulated using random dot patterns on a simulated real object surface, by manipulating dot size, dot density, and whether or not objects placed behind the surface were partially occluded by the surface.

Description:
In this research, we explore how different types of augmented gesture communication cues can be used under different view sharing techniques in a remote collaboration system. In a pilot study, we compared four conditions: (1) Pointers on Still Image, (2) Pointers on Live Video, (3) Annotation on Still Image, and (4) Annotation on Live Video. Through this study, we found three results. First, users collaborate more efficiently using annotation cues than pointer cues for communicating object position and orientation information. Second, live video becomes more important when quick feedback is needed. Third, the type of gesture cue has more influence on performance and user preference than the type of view sharing method.

Description:
We proposed a 6 degrees of freedom augmentation system aimed at meeting the high accuracy requirements of engineering tasks. A stationary panoramic video camera captures a stream that is augmented by a portable computer. A handheld tablet device located in the same area broadcasts its instantaneous orientation, and receives the augmented view in the corresponding orientation, in real time. The panoramic camera can also be moved to other locations and simultaneously tracked by the system, providing 6 degrees of freedom augmentation. This gives the user a third person perspective augmentation, which is very precise and potentially more accurate than handheld augmentation.

Description:
When we read a document (any kind of, scientific papers, novels, etc.), we often encounter a situation that the information from the reading document is too less to comprehend what the author(s) would like to convey. In this paper, we demonstrate how the combination of a wearable eye tracker, a see-through head-mounted display (HMD) and an image based document retrieval engine enhances people's s reading experiences. By using our proposed system, the reader can get supportive information in the see-through HMD when he wants. A wearable eye tracker and a document retrieval engine are used to detect which line in the document the reader is reading. We propose a method to detect the reader's s attention on a word in a reading document, in order to present information at a preferable moment. Furthermore, we also propose a method to project a point of the document to a point of the HMD screen, by calculating the pose of the reading document in the camera image. This projection enables the system to overlay the information dynamically in an augmented view on the reading line. The results from the user study and the experiments show the potential of the proposed system in a practical use case.