Christian Knöpfle, Fraunhofer-IGD
Augmented Reality (AR) explores various approaches to enhance the user's view of the real world with computer generated information. By combining live video input with immersive display technology, AR allows users to work with real 3D objects while seeing additional information about the objects or the task at hand. Such information can be assigned to an object in the real world. thus they always stay at the same position in the world, even when the user moves his head or walks around. This is accomplished by tracking the user (estimating position and orientation) in the real-world and then use such information to insert the additional information at the right place in the field of view of the user. In this talk we will present different approaches to AR real-time tracking (vision based). The focus will be on feature based tracking, which allows to detect natural objects / features in the real-world and use such information for the estimation of position and orientation of the user.
AR can be applied in different industrial sectors e.g. for production or maintenance of complex machines and facilities, for visualisation of sensor or simulation data or for architecture and design studies. In this talk we will provide an overview of the major application areas, like service and maintenance.