Hand-Held Projectors for Augmented Reality
This work is about projecting augmentation data onto real world objects, using a portable hand-held projector. Augmentation is used (a) to provide data about the state of an object; (b) to provide training information about how to control a machine or device; (c) to guide a user to the location of a requested object e.g. by highlighting one bin in an array of storage bins; (d) to reveal the presence of electronic data (such as virtual post-it notes) in the environment.
Background & Objective: Augmented reality is a well-established concept. It can be realized by displaying an image plus augmentation on a normal display, or by using see-thru eye-worn displays to supplement the user's direct view with augmentation data, or by projecting the augmentation directly onto the object of interest. Current systems for projecting the augmentation tend to be static, and often require significant calibration before use. This work demonstrates a much more flexible approach - portable projectors which can be used in hand-held mode, or can be easily deployed on surfaces around an object of interest.
Technical Discussion: The projector is augmented with a camera to support object recognition, and to allow computation of the pose of the projector. Common to previous approaches, we do object recognition by means of fiducials attached to the object of interest. Our fiducials are 'piecodes', which allow thousands of distinct color-codings. As well as providing identity, these fiducials are used to compute camera pose and hence projector pose. A hand-held projector can use various aspects of its context when projecting content onto a recognized object. We use proximity to the object to determine level-of-detail for the content. Other examples of context for content control will be gestural motion, and the presence of other devices during cooperative projection. We are currently investigating how to do mouse-style interactions with the projected augmentation data, by means of a projected cursor.
Technology Areas:
Off the Desktop Interaction and Display
Computer Vision
Graphics
Modification Date: July 7, 2008