A smartphone‐based augmented reality system for university students for learning digital electronics

Abstract

AbstractThe fundamental concepts of electronic devices are generally taught in the initial courses of electrical and electronics engineering. For students, it is very important to grasp the basic concepts that make computers and digital systems possible. Among these concepts, boolean algebra and logic gates stand out. In this paper, a smartphone‐based augmented reality (AR) system is proposed which helps in the adequate learning of logic gate integrated circuits (ICs). The proposed system allows the automatic identification of ICs that enables basic logic operations. It uses a smartphone and a breadboard for the identification of 7 basic logic gate ICs that are: AND gate, OR gate, NOT gate, NAND gate, NOR gate, XOR gate, and XNOR gate. The smartphone takes a picture of the electronic circuit and digitally generates a layer of virtual objects which are then mixed with the original image. The markless paradigm identifies the ICs in a typical circuit and places three objects that are: IC identification, pins information, and logic diagram information. Finally, the smartphone screen displays the image of the logic gate obtained. The entire evaluation of the AR system is presented with a technical efficiency of 97.5 and a qualitative satisfaction study.