Towards Massively Multi-user Augmented Reality on Handheld Devices

Augmented Reality (AR) can naturally complement mobile computing on wearable devices by providing an intuitive interface to a three-dimensional information space embedded within physical reality. Unfortunately, current wearable AR systems are relatively complex, expensive, fragile and heavy, rendering them unfit for large-scale deployment involving untrained users outside constrained laboratory environments. Consequently, the scale of collaborative multi-user experiments have not yet exceeded a handful of participants. In this paper, we present a system architecture for interactive, infrastructure-independent multi-user AR applications running on off-the-shelf handheld devices. We implemented a four-user interactive game installation as an evaluation setup to encourage playful engagement of participants in a cooperative task. Over the course of five weeks, more than five thousand visitors from a wide range of professional and socio-demographic backgrounds interacted with our system...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2005
• Where: PERVASIVE
• Authors: Daniel Wagner, Thomas Pintaric, Florian Ledermann, Dieter Schmalstieg
• Keywords: Applied Computing, Current Wearable Ar, Infrastructure-independent Multi-user Ar, PERVASIVE 2005, Wearable Devices