Mobile Augmented Reality: exploring information, interface and interaction in blended environments
White Paper
Project Overview
Smartphone applications of mobile augmented reality (MAR) take what your eye can see through your phone's camera, blend it with digital sources of information about what you are seeing, and present both to you in a composite view. For instance, it can recognize the section of a city skyline in your phone's camera viewfinder, retrieve information about the area's recent and current air quality readings, and display this information as a graphic overlay in your viewfinder.
Such applications promise to mediate and strengthen personalised and serendipitous ways for people to interact with static features and changing phenomena in their vicinity in real time. Researchers are developing a prototype MAR application for smartphones that will treat the camera view of any building as a public portal or interface to information produced there or otherwise associated with the site. A key component of this research is exploring the possible ways that passers-by may interact with this information while in the vicinity of the building.
The project will trial this smartphone-based MAR application in Melbourne's Parkville Precinct for healthcare and biomedical science research. Researchers are investigating whether and how smartphone-based MAR makes it possible for a wide range of people who find themselves in the vicinity of the buildings in this precinct to have meaningful and productive interactions related to the information associated with the precinct.
This project addresses the need to broaden community knowledge about and engagement with scholarly and scientific activity not only in this precinct but elsewhere at the University of Melbourne, as well as in many other places where making information more freely discernible on the spot may reinforce its purpose and increase its value. The findings from this project will provide theoretical and practical insights into both technical and social aspects of smartphone-based MAR.
Research Team
| Researcher/s | Department |
|---|---|
| Kathleen Gray, Jess Kilby, Jenny Waycott, Fernando Martin-Sanchez | Health and Biomedical Informatics |
| Kristine Elliott | Medical Education Unit |
| Bharat Dave | Architecture, Building and Planning |