Augmented reality on mobile devices for architectural visualisation

Abstract

During the last few years Augmented Reality (AR) applications have seen an enormous growth in different fields. These include advertising, project planning as well as complex information providing platforms. One area however that could profit greatly from using Augmented Reality is architectural visualisation. The aim of this work is to show how and in what areas Augmented Reality can improve the presentation of information about an architectural project or content. First an introduction on the historical development and currently available AR applications is given. Following that the technical background and the relevant theoretical knowledge necessary to understand and build an AR system on mobile devices are presented.<br />Special attention is thereby given to the differentiation between sensor based and computer vision-based AR, the two generally applicable methods for handheld AR. After a short introduction to the three use cases the development framework used to build the test applications for tablet computers is explained in further detail. The evaluation of feasibility is conducted based on three real-world usage scenarios in the architectural domain. Following a demonstration of each example, challenges encountered during the implementation process are discussed.<br />While AR is currently not part of a typical architectural workflow these examples show to what extent it could be already integrated and how the design team as well as clients could profit from using this technology in the future.