Towards massively multi-user augmented reality on handheld devices

  • Authors:

  • Daniel Wagner;Thomas Pintaric;Florian Ledermann;Dieter Schmalstieg

  • Affiliations:

  • Graz University of Technology;Graz University of Technology;Vienna University of Technology;Graz University of Technology

  • Venue:
  • PERVASIVE'05 Proceedings of the Third international conference on Pervasive Computing
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

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 at four different locations.