Mixed reality infrastructure
Mixed reality (MR) infrastructure is focusing on basic research for mobile devices and their application for urban environments. Mobile settings in this context can vary in scale between light-weight systems such as smart phones or sub-notebooks, and semi-stationary devices such as high-end equipment in the MR tent. Light-weight devices are used for exploring a larger region in the urban environment. The idea of scouting allows a user, who is equipped with a portable device and several sensors (i.e. GPS receiver, camera), to act as a data collector and to deliver required data (e.g. images, videos, sounds) for the urban planning process.
The idea of the MR tent is to give shelter and to provide high-end equipment to a larger audience. The research of WP5 also includes a communication infrastructure which allows the efficient communication between mobile users and the participants in MR tent. Since mobile users must be located within different environments and settings the fusion of different sensors such as GPS, interia and vision-based tracking for unconstrained environments must be carried out. The following list summarizes the main research objectives of this workpackage:
- Which mobile light-weight Augmented Reality (AR) devices are suitable outdoor?
- How can we support AR on these devices?
- Which software infrastructure is required?
- How can the technical advantages of the semi-stationary AR installation such as the MR tent and the mobility of wearable AR be combined ?
- How can we achieve a high location tracking quality in all areas of the city?
- Which precision can a computer vision-based tracking approach deliver. How can current computer vision-based tracking approaches be improved regarding robustness in unconstrained environments (i.e. dynamically changing illumination conditions)?
See more about the development of IPCity @ TUGraz
The following links give you more information about ongoing work in this field: