Resolving Multiple Occluded Layers in Augmented Reality

A useful function of augmented reality (AR) systems is their ability to visualize occluded infrastructure directly in a user’s view of the environment. This is especially important for our application context, which utilizes mobile AR for navigation and other operations in an urban environment. A key problem in the AR field is how to best depict occluded objects in such a way that the viewer can correctly infer the depth relationships between different physical and virtual objects. Showing a single occluded object with no depth context presents an ambiguous picture to the user. But showing all occluded objects in the environments leads to the “Superman’s X-ray vision” problem, in which the user sees too much information to make sense of the depth relationships of objects. Our efforts differ qualitatively from previous work in AR occlusion, because our application domain involves farfield occluded objects, which are tens of meters distant from the user. Previous work has focu...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2003
• Where: ISMAR
• Authors: Mark A. Livingston, J. Edward Swan II, Joseph L. Gabbard, Tobias Höllerer, Deborah Hix, Simon Julier, Yohan Baillot, Dennis Brown
• Keywords: Augmented Reality, Depict Occluded Objects, Depth Relationships, ISMAR 2003, Occluded Objects