Chloe@University: an indoor, mobile mixed reality guidance system

ABSTRACT

With the advent of ubiquitous and pervasive computing environments, one of promising applications is a guidance system. In this paper, we propose a mobile mixed reality guide system for indoor environments, Chloe@University. A mobile computing device (Sony's Ultra Mobile PC) is hidden inside a jacket and a user selects a destination inside a building through voice commands. A 3D virtual assistant then appears in the see-through HMD and guides him/her to destination. Thus, the user simply follows the virtual guide. Chloe@University also suggests the most suitable virtual character (e.g. human guide, dog, cat, etc.) based on user preferences and profiles. Depending on user profiles, different security levels and authorizations for content are previewed. Concerning indoor location tracking, WiFi, RFID, and sensor-based methods are integrated in this system to have maximum flexibility. Moreover smart and transparent wireless connectivity provides the user terminal with fast and seamless transition among Access Points (APs). Different AR navigation approaches have been studied: [Olwal 2006], [Elmqvist et al.] and [Newman et al.] work indoors while [Bell et al. 2002] and [Reitmayr and Drummond 2006] are employed outdoors. Accurate tracking and registration is still an open issue and recently it has mostly been tackled by no single method, but mostly through aggregation of tracking and localization methods, mostly based on handheld AR. A truly wearable, HMD based mobile AR navigation aid for both indoors and outdoors with rich 3D content remains an open issue and a very active field of multi-discipline research.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  I. Computing Methodologies
  I.3 COMPUTER GRAPHICS
      I.3.7 Three-Dimensional Graphics and Realism

Keywords:
localization, mixed reality, real-time systems, sensor networks, virtual human