Designing Outdoor Mixed Reality Hardware Systems

2002

The augurscope is a portable mixed reality interface for outdoors. A tripod-mounted display is wheeled to different locations and rotated and tilted to view a virtual environment that is aligned with the physical background. Video from an onboard camera is embedded into this virtual environment. Our design encompasses physical form, interaction and the combination of a GPS receiver, electronic compass, accelerometer and rotary encoder for tracking. An initial application involves the public exploring a medieval castle from the site of its modern replacement. Analysis of use reveals problems with lighting, movement and relating virtual and physical viewpoints, and shows how environmental factors and physical form affect interaction. We suggest that problems might be accommodated by carefully constructing virtual and physical content.

2009

This chapter presents an overview of the Mixed Reality (MR) paradigm, which proposes to overlay our real-world environment with digital, computer-generated objects. It presents example applications and outlines limitations and solutions for their technical implementation. In MR systems, users perceive both the physical environment around them and digital elements presented through, for example, the use of semitransparent displays. By its very nature, MR is a highly interdisciplinary field engaging signal processing, computer vision, computer graphics, user interfaces, human factors, wearable computing, mobile computing, information visualization, and the design of displays and sensors. This chapter presents potential MR applications, technical challenges in realizing MR systems, as well as issues related to usability and collaboration in MR. It separately presents a section offering a selection of MR projects which have either been partly or fully undertaken at Swiss universities and rounds off with a section on current challenges and trends.

2007

This paper presents an overview of the most significant issues when designing mixed reality interfaces including displays, tracking, interface design, interactivity and realism. Multimodal issues regarding visualization and interaction are integrated into a single interface. Three case studies in diverse areas including automotive, archaeology and navigation are presented, illustrating the use of the above issues addressed. Furthermore, the experiences gained and lessons learned are discussed including our plans for future work.

This paper presents experimental results of a mobile mixed reality interface designed for geovisualization of 3D realistic urban environments which allows dynamic switching between three visualization domains: a virtual reality; an augmented reality and a mixed reality interface to get the best possible representation for visual exploration. On each domain, four different types of geovisualisation and navigation aids can be superimposed including geo-referenced 3D maps, 2D digital maps, spatial 3D sound and 3D/2D textual annotations. Interaction is performed using keyboard, mouse, menus and tangible ways. To gather user requirements about urban and virtual navigation and to assess the effectiveness of mobile interface, a two-stage evaluation was performed.

SBC Journal on Interactive Systems, 2013

This special issue of the JIS (SBC Journal on 3D Interactive Systems) is for the third year acknowledging the best papers of the Symposium on Virtual and Augmented Reality (SVR). The SVR is the most important Brazilian conference about Virtual, Augmented and Mixed Reality, which is being conducted by acadeThis special issue of the SBC Journal on 3D Interactive Systems is dedicated to Virtual, Augmented, and Mixed Reality Applications. Our goal is to present systems papers focusing on applications and on how they are being used (or how they are intended to be used) to solve real problems. We received seven manuscripts and after a peer review phase, were able to select five papers. The selected papers for this issue cover very different areas, ranging from industry to digital art, through medicine, spacecraft simulation and terrain generation.

Mixed reality (MR) is something that can be defined as a combination of real and virtual words. It can be used to provide newer visualizations and environments in the digital world and can interact with each other. It is a true mixture of how virtual and physical worlds can coexist. It is a sophisticated approach which uses a specific model and architecture to support 3-D display for free and augmented virtuality. The first phase conceptual design benefits like the first stage of the prototype by additional shapes, patterns and annotations. Both workspaces share a common interface and allow collaboration with different experts, who can configure the system for a specific task .A speedy design workflow and CAD data consistency can be naturally achieved .There is no similar approach that integrates the creation and editing phase of 3D curves and surfaces in Virtual and Augmented Reality (VR/AR).Herein we see the major contributions of our new application.

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2009

This chapter presents an overview of the Mixed Reality (MR) paradigm, which proposes to overlay our real-world environment with digital, computer-generated objects. It presents example applications and outlines limitations and solutions for their technical implementation. In MR systems, users perceive both the physical environment around them and digital elements presented through, for example, the use of semitransparent displays. By its very nature, MR is a highly interdisciplinary field engaging signal processing, computer vision, computer graphics, user interfaces, human factors, wearable computing, mobile computing, information visualization, and the design of displays and sensors. This chapter presents potential MR applications, technical challenges in realizing MR systems, as well as issues related to usability and collaboration in MR. It separately presents a section offering a selection of MR projects which have either been partly or fully undertaken at Swiss universities and rounds off with a section on current challenges and trends.

2017

Virtual Reality (VR) is widely used in training simulators of dangerous or expensive vehicles such as aircraft or heavy mining machinery. The vehicles often have very complicated controls that users need to master before attempting to operate a real world version of the machine. VR allows users to safely train in a simulated environment without the risk of injury or damaging expensive equipment in the field. VR however visually cuts off the user from the real environment, which may obtain obstructions. Users are unable to safely move or gesture while wearing a VR headset. Additionally users are unable to use standard input devices such as mice and keyboards. By mixing in a live view of the the real world, the user can still see and interact with the physical environment. The contribution of this research is presenting ways of using Mixed Reality to enhance the user experience of traditional VR based simulators. Mixed Reality improves on traditional VR simulators by allowing the user...

IEEE transactions on visualization and computer graphics, 2018

We present MRTouch, a novel multitouch input solution for head-mounted mixed reality systems. Our system enables users to reach out and directly manipulate virtual interfaces affixed to surfaces in their environment, as though they were touchscreens. Touch input offers precise, tactile and comfortable user input, and naturally complements existing popular modalities, such as voice and hand gesture. Our research prototype combines both depth and infrared camera streams together with real-time detection and tracking of surface planes to enable robust finger-tracking even when both the hand and head are in motion. Our technique is implemented on a commercial Microsoft HoloLens without requiring any additional hardware nor any user or environmental calibration. Through our performance evaluation, we demonstrate high input accuracy with an average positional error of 5.4 mm and 95% button size of 16 mm, across 17 participants, 2 surface orientations and 4 surface materials. Finally, we d...

Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2008

We present a platform that offers designers flexibility on device design, fast prototyping, and integration of new devices to a mixed reality infrastructure. Our solution is based on the integration of a commercial embedded system, the Qwerk, and the Virtual Reality Peripheral Network (VRPN), a network-transparent interface between applications and typical virtual reality (VR) devices. This solution creates a hardware and software layer between new devices and VR applications that facilitate development. We show here three examples. The first application targets a simple device for object movement on an axis. The second one consists on a device that changes the color of a virtual object based on temperature. Finally, we design, build, and test a new wireless navigation device, our "Light Gloves".