Augmented Reality

Introduction

Over the past years, we (and others) have built a number of augmented reality systems to address many problem domains. For specific examples, see our papers. We would like to continue exploring the uses of augmented reality, as well as investigating certain general issues in greater depth (such as how to interact with the environment, suitable rendering techniques, etc).

Project

The goal of this project is to design and build a simple augmented reality system using Java-3D. We have a high quality head-tracking system in the Augmented Environments Lab that allows the position and orientation of a users head to be tracked with high accuracy and low latency over a 10' cube (basically, one end of our lab). We also have high-resolution (800x600) stereo head-worn displays driven either by a Sun (Ultra 10 Elite-m3 graphics) or a NT machine (SGI 320 Visual Workstation).

You can either replicate a previous augmented reality system (such as one discussed in our previous work) or create a new system. You should discuss your plan with Dr. MacIntyre before deciding to do this project.

Once you start, here is what you need to do.

1. Read the following papers:
   • Azuma, Ronald T. A Survey of Augmented Reality. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments 6, 4 (August 1997), 355 - 385 (available from Ron's old web page here in pdf format)
   • Feiner, Steven, MacIntyre, Blair and Seligmann, Doree. ``Knowledge-Based Augmented Reality.'' In Communications of the ACM 36(7): 53-62, July, 1993. (if you are not an ACM member, see Dr. MacIntyre for a copy. However, you should join; the digital library is useful, and student membership is cheap.)

• Webster, A., Feiner, S., MacIntyre, B., Massie, B., and Krueger, T. ``Augmented reality in architectural construction, inspection and renovation.'' In Proc. Third ASCE Congress for Computing in Civil Engineering, June 17-18, 1996, Anaheim, CA. (pdf is here)

1. Decide on the AR system you would like to build.
2. Meet with Dr. MacIntyre regularly to discuss your progress.

Background

• Augmented Environments Lab web page
• Experience Java and with 3D computer graphics is a must. VR experience would also be useful.

Deliverables

• Meet with Dr. MacIntyre a few times to discuss the project you are interested in pursuing
• Write a 1-2 page report addressing the following issues:
  • Describe your system
  • Describe the design decisions you made
• Submit your code, demonstrate your system and discuss it with Dr. MacIntyre

Evaluation

Based on the code, demonstration and report turned in to the sponsor of the project by the due date.