Geography, GIS and LBS

Introduction

Another application donain in which augmented reality can be applied effectively is in Geography, Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and Location Based Services. In this section, an overview of some experimental prototypes based on the functionality of MRGIS which has been developed within the LOCUS research project are presented. These include:

Geo-Visualisation and Pre-Navigation

This work presents an interactive visualisation framework specifically designed for presenting geographical information in indoor environments. The input of our system is ESRI Shapefiles which represent 3D building geometry and landuse attributes. Participants can visualise 3D reconstructions of geographical information in real-time based on two visualisation clients: a VR interface and a tangible AR interface.

Users can interact with the geographical information using standard I/O devices (i.e. mouse, keyboard), sensor devices (i.e. SpaceMouse) as well as natural techniques (i.e. marker cards). For more information visit the MRGIS page.

• Liarokapis, F., Greatbatch, I., Mountain, D., Gunesh, A., Brujic-Okretic, V., Raper, J., Mobile Augmented Reality Techniques for GeoVisualisation, Proc. 9th International Conference on Information Visualisation, IEEE Computer Society, 6-8 July, London, 745-751, (2005). ISBN: 0-7695-2397-8. Pdf

• Raper, J., Liarokapis, F., Mountain, D., Brujic-Okretic, V., Personal navigation using digital mobile devices, Geomatics World , March/April, 13(3): 36-38, (2005).

Outdoor Navigation

This work presents a prototype wearable AR navigational and wayfinding system for urban environments. The hardware configuration consists of a laptop and a video camera. two different modes of registration have been designed and experimented upon, based upon fudicial and feature recognition. In addition, a combination of four different types of contextual navigational information such as 3D maps, 2D maps, text and 3D sound can be used in various combinations to assist users navigate. An example of an early testing of the natural feature detection method at City University is illustrated in the following screenshots.

Maximum distance of detection and registration (left image), a few frames later (right image). For more information visit the MRGIS page.

• Liarokapis, F., Raper, J., Brujic-Okretic, V., Navigating within the urban environment using Location and Orientation-based Services, Proc. of the European Navigation Conference & Exhibition 2006, 7-10 May, Manchester, UK, (2006). Pdf

• Liarokapis, F., Brujic-Okretic, V., Location-based Mixed Reality for Mobile Information Services, Advanced Imaging , April, 21(4): 22-25, (2006). ISSN: 1042-0711.

• Liarokapis, F., Mountain, D., Papakonstantinou, S., Brujic-Okretic, V., Raper, J., Mixed Reality For Exploring Urban Environments, Proc. 1rst International Conference on Computer Graphics Theory and Applications (GRAPP 2006), 25-28 Feb, Setubal, Portugal, 208-215, (2006). ISBN: 972-8865-39-2. Pdf

• Mountain, D., Liarokapis, F., Interacting with Virtual Reality scenes on mobile devices, Proc. 7th Int'l Conference on Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices & Services, Salzburg, Austria, 19-22 September, 331-332, (2005). ISBN:1-59593-089-2. Pdf

Videos

The following videos illustrate part of the capabilities of the work performed in this application domain.