Issues in View Management for 3D Objects on Multiple Displays

Student: Fabian Sturm
Supervisor: Dipl.Inf. Christian Sandor
Professor: Prof. Gudrun Klinker
Submission date: 15.06.2004

Milestones

Date	Description	Links
	Submitted Thesis	coming soon
	Final Presentation	PDF (1 MB)

Abstract

Augmented Reality (AR) is a research field where it is investigated how the real world view of humans can be overlayed with virtual images to create a combined image. The virtual images hereby are used to enrich the user's perception with additional information like street names, names of people or other information like working tasks. The benefit of this type of information presentation is to let the user access the additional information with minimal effort and with limited distraction from his original viewing task.

Therefore it is required to place the virtual information within the user's field of view in a way that the user does not have to intervene with the arrangement. This requires either a predefined layout by the AR application developer or an algorithmic solution. Due to the nature of the AR applications, where the user's view point changes constantly, which has effect on what and where additional information can be shown, predefined layout solutions are not feasible. Instead it is aimed to find an algorithmic solution to create automatic layouts which is known as view management.

Classical AR applications only added two dimensional information like text labels or pictograms to the scene. With the availability of high performance computers even in a wearable form factor it is nowadays possible to add complex graphics and even three dimensional objects to the scene. This not only leads to more realistic augmentation where the difference between real and virtual objects vanishes but allowes a variety of new applications.

Another effect of the development of faster and smaller computer technology is that the availability of displays rises. It ranges from the classic AR displays like Head-Mounted displays (HMD) to computer monitors, tablett pcs and palmtops. Since at the same time the interconnection of all the different devices increases through new network techniques like Wireless Lan and Bluetooth is the logical conclusion to use all devices within the user's view as one combined display.

All these factors lead to the topic of "Issues in View Management for 3D Objects on Multiple Displays". This thesis will first look into view management characteristics followed by technical issues and their solutions. Finally, it is looked into the proposed integration of it into the Distributed Wearable Augmented Reality Framework.

-- FabianSturm^? - 15 Jun 2004