Recent progress in the overlay and registration of digital information on the users workspace in a spatially meaningful way has allowed mixed reality (MR) to become a more effective operational medium. In the area of medical surgery, surgeons are conveyed with information such as the incisions location, regions to be avoided, diseased tissues, etc, while staying in and keeping their original working environment. The main objective of this Thesis is identifying theoretical and practical basis for how mixed reality interfaces might provide support and augmentation maximizing the continuity of interaction. We start proposing a set of design principles organized in a design space which allows to identify continuity interaction properties at an early stage of the development system. Once the abstract design possibilities have been identified and a concrete design decision has been taken, an implementational strategy can be developed. Two approaches were investigated: markerless and marker-based. The last one is used to provide surgeons with guidance on an osteotomy task in the maxillo-facial surgery. The evaluation process applies usability tests with users to validate the augmented guidance in different scenarios and to study the influence of different design variables in the final user interaction. As a result we have found a model to describe the contribution factors of each variable for the continuity of the user interaction. We suggest that this methodology can be applied mainly to those applications in which smooth connections and interactions, with virtual and real environments, are critical for the system; i.e. surgery, drivers applications or pilot simulations.

Reconstructing a 3-dimensional scene from a set of2-dimensional images is a fundamental problem in computervision. A system capable of performing this task can be used inmany applications in robotics, architecture, archaeology,biometrics, human computer interaction and the movie andentertainment industry. Most existing reconstruction approaches exploit one sourceof information to tackle the problem. This is the motion of thecamera, the 2D images are taken from different viewpoints. Weexploit an additional information source, the reference plane,which makes it possible to reconstruct difficult scenes whereother methods fail. A real scene plane may serve as thereference plane. Furthermore, there are many alternativetechniques to obtain virtual reference planes. For instance,orthogonal directions in the scene provide a virtual referenceplane, the plane at infinity, or images taken with a parallelprojection camera. A collection of known and novel referenceplane scenarios is presented in this thesis. The main contribution of the thesis is a novel multi-viewreconstruction approach using a reference plane. The techniqueis applicable to three different feature types, points, linesand planes. The novelty of our approach is that all cameras andall features (off the reference plane) are reconstructedsimultaneously from a single linear system of imagemeasurements. It is based on the novel observation that camerasand features have a linear relationship if a reference plane isknown. In the absence of a reference plane, this relationshipis non-linear. Thus many previousmethods must reconstructfeatures and cameras sequentially. Another class of methods,popular in the literature, is factorization, but, in contrastto our approach, this has the serious practical drawback thatall features are required to be visible in all views. Extensiveexperiments show that our approach is superior to allpreviously suggested reference plane and non-reference planemethods for difficult reference plane scenarios. Furthermore, the thesis studies scenes which do not have aunique reconstruction, so-called critical configurations. It isproven that in the presence of a reference plane the set ofcritical configurations is small. Finally, the thesis introduces a complete, automaticmulti-view reconstruction system based on the reference planeapproach. The input data is a set of images and the output a 3Dpoint reconstruction together with the correspondingcameras.

This thesis explores the application of vision-based augmented reality in formal and informal educational environments. It focuses on the common practices, concerns, and priorities that developers and content creators in each environment frequently encounter, offering insights into how these experiences are changing with the incorporation of new digital media technologies and the hardware platforms that support them. The research outlined in this thesis uses qualitative methods, assembled around a series of twelve hour-long interviews with highly-experienced educators, developers, researchers, and designers, and analyzed using a grounded theory approach. This thesis introduces original research about the role of computer vision-based augmented reality as an educational medium, a topical discussion in information studies, museum studies, learning sciences, and a number of other fields, and makes a theoretical commitment to addressing the ways that material and virtual objects come to interact meaningfully in a variety of learning environments.

University of Macau / Faculty of Science and Technology / Department of Computer and Information Science

This paper examines the potential benefits of using augmented reality as a tool for visualizing furniture in a buyer’s own environment before buying it. A simple prototype is developed and tested.  The steps for developing the prototype are described in great detail as well as the tools being used. The prototype is tested both on people working in the furniture business as well as people with experience in buying furniture online. In conclusion the results from the user tests are analyzed and the potential benefits are described. In addition to analyzing the potential benefits of the tool this paper also describes how this tool should be designed to best fit the needs of the would-be users.

No description available.

Det här examensarbetet på D-nivå har utförts i samarbete men företaget XM reality i Linköping. Företaget jobbar med att ta fram olika system inom området mixed reality, som på svenska översätts till förhöjd verklighet.   Syftet med projektet var att utforma två olika handhållna projektorsystem. Produkterna skulle utformas för att passa in i sjukhusmiljö. Båda enheterna har samma funktion men innehåller olika komponenter. Produkterna är anpassade till en ny teknik som företaget har utvecklat. Den nya tekniken är en mixed reality applikation som gör det möjligt att projicera skiktscanningar, CT eller MRI, direkt på patientens kropp. Målet med projektet var att göra två fungerade modeller. Modellerna skall fungera som prototyper i den medicinska forskarstudien som projektet ingår i.   En designstrategi utformades till företaget som skall uttrycka företagets image och vision. I arbetet med designstrategin togs ett antal kärnvärden fram. Kärnvärdena blev high tech, professionell, framtid, exklusiv, kvalité, hållbar samt kompakt vilket skall gälla för företagets samtliga produkter. Till produktsegmentet sjukhusprodukter tillades kärnvärdena ergonomisk samt dynamisk.   Arbetet med att utveckla produkterna började med litterära ergonomiska studier som följdes upp av fysiska användarstudier. Under arbetats gång har flera olika metoder tillämpats. Metoderna har används för att fatta beslut men även som stöd i den kreativa gestaltningsprocessen.   Resultatet är två ergonomiskt anpassade handhållna enheter. Enheterna är utformade för att passa in i sjukhusmiljön. De är smidiga samt enkla att använda. Båda produkterna är utformade efter designstrategin och för att förmedla företagets image. De fysiska modeller som gjordes innehåller fungerande komponenter som går att bytas ut. / This thesis D-level is done in collaboration with the company XM reality that is located in Linköping, Sweden. The company is working with the development of various systems in the field of mixed reality.   The task was to design two different hand-held projector systems. The products should be designed to fit in to the hospital environment. Both products have the same function but contain different components. The products are adapted to a new technology that the company has developed. The new technology is a mixed reality application that makes it possible to project CT or MRI scans directly on to the patient's body. The goal of the project was to make two functioning models. The models are to be used as prototypes in the medical research study the project is a part of.   A design strategy was created for the company to reflect the company’s image and vision. In the process of developing the design strategy, a number of core values were established. The core values were high-tech, professional, futuristic, exclusive, quality, durable and compact, which should to be valid for all the company’s products. To the product segment of hospital products were the core values ergonomic and dynamic added.   The work to develop the products began with literary ergonomic studies that were followed up by user studies. During the working process, several different methods were used. The methods were used not only to make decisions but also to help the creative design process.   The result is two ergonomically designed hand-held devices. The products are designed to fit into the hospital environment. They are slim and easy to use. Both products are designed along the design strategy and to communicate the company's image. The physical models that were made contain functional components that can be changed.

Prestandan i dagens mobiltelefoner har ökat på senare tid. Därmed har det blivit aktuellt med förstärkt verklighet i mobilapplikationer. Det här arbetet har undersökt hur förstärkt verklighet används i mobilapplikationer för att framhäva en plats. Genom att använda förstärkt verklighet blir det möjligt att tillföra information till den verkliga platsen. I syfte att applicera förstärkt verklighet har vi utvecklat Lara. Lara är en prototyp av ett spel i form av en virtuell skattjakt som utspelar sig på Campus Valla i Linköping. Den evolutionära prototypen har testats av fyra personer som efter testet svarat på frågor angående användbarheten. Resultatet från testerna visade att användbarheten var god. Testerna visade även att det finns intresse att utöka Lara med både server och editor. Arbetet visade att presentationen av förstärkt verklighet har stor betydelse för hur påtaglig upplevelsen blir. / The performance of mobile phones have increased recently. Thus, it has become relevant with augmented reality in mobile applications. This work has examined how augmented reality is used in mobile applications to focus on a location. By using augmented reality you will be able to add information to a place. In order to apply augmented reality, we have developed Lara. Lara is a prototype of a game in the form of a virtual treasure hunt that takes place at Campus Valla in Linköping.The evolutionary prototype has been tested by four people who afterwards answered questions about usability. Results of the tests showed that the usability was good. The tests also showed that there is interest to expand Lara with both server and editor. The work showed that the presentation of augmented reality have significant impact on how real the experience becomes.

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology which blends virtual and real worlds. The technology has various potential application domains such as broadcasting, architecture, manufacturing, and entertainment. As the tempting developments in AR technology continues, the solutions for rapid creation of AR applications become crucial. This thesis presents an AR application development framework with scripting capability as a solution for rapid application development and rapid prototyping in AR. The proposed AR framework shares several components with game engines. Thus, the framework is designed as an extension of a game engine. The components of the framework are designed to be changable in a plug-in system. The proposed framework provides the developers with the ability of agile coding through the scripting language. Our solution embeds a dynamic scripting programming language (Python) in a strictly typed static programming language (C++) in order to achieve both agility and performance. The communication between the AR framework components and the scripting programming language is established through a messaging mechanism.

Augmented Reality (AR) has become a popular area in computer Science where research studies and technological innovations are extensive. Research in AR first began in the early 1990s and thenceforth, a number of dierent tracking algorithms and methods have been developed. Tracking systems have a critical importance for AR and marker based vision tracking systems became the mostly used tracking systems due to their low cost and ease of use. Basically, marker systems consist of special patterns that are placed in the environment and detected by simple cameras. In this thesis, we propose a new marker system based on topological tracking where markers are detected and identified using their topology trees. In our proposed marker system, we create topology trees of markers as region adjacency graphs that are obtained from binary images of the markers. Similarly, camera frames are also converted into binary images and corresponding topology trees are created. We used left heavy depth sequences as the canonical convention for the topology trees. For marker tracking, we used a simplified version of subgraph isomorphism algorithm that searches marker topology trees in a frame topology tree. Finally, we tested our proposed system for performance in using spatially distinct marker parts / occlusion resolving / detection rate with respect to marker size, camera-marker angle, false positive marker detection / performance with respect marker library size. Our system achieved 90% marker detection success with 50 pixels marker size and an average of 1.1 false positive marker detection in ten dierent test videos. We made all tests in comparison with the widely used ARToolkit library. Our system surpasses the ARToolkit library for all tests performed. In addition, our system enables spatially distinct placement of marker parts and permits occlusion unless the topology of the marker is not corrupted, but the ARToolkit library does not have these features.