Design of a mobile markerless augmented reality prototype platform

[摘要] ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Markerless mobile Augmented Reality (AR) is currently being limited by theprocessing power available on smartphones and tablet-like devices, which alsolimits the research that can be done using these devices. To overcome theproblem of limited processing power and the problem of being limited to thedevice's original hardware, the development of a laptop-based prototype platformwas proposed. The use of a laptop was motivated by the processing powerit o ers and because it is self-contained, but still allows for expansion.The implemented system consists of a handheld tablet-like display withtouch input, attached to a backpack which houses the processing unit of thelaptop. The tablet portion of the device is equipped with stereo cameras andinertial sensors to allow for optical inertial hybrid tracking. A basic opticalinertial Extended Kalman Filter based tracking system was implemented asproof of the concept.A modular design was implemented that allows for components to be addedto or removed from the prototype, thereby allowing for rapid prototyping withvarious combinations of sensors and cameras. Furthermore, multi-core andparallel processing, on both the GPU and CPU, was used to achieve fastprocessing with only minimal optimisations.The conceptual design, practical implementation, and testing of the prototypeplatform are covered in this document, along with recommendations forboth continued research and the creation of similar systems.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University