Augmented Reality adaptive web content

Abstract

In this paper we present a design of an Augmented Reality (AR) browser that renders web pages without obstructing the view of the world when seen from an AR headset such as Oculus Rift, Gear VR or Google Cardboard. The browser overlays the contents of the web page transparently on the user's view and is capable of modifying font size, colors, and layout of the web page, such that it augments the user's view of the page. This approach is different from existing AR applications such as Amazon Flow, in that it is more flexible and acts as a real browser. In existing browsers, webpages are sandboxed and hence cannot access the capabilities of AR. We describe the design of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and JavaScript (JS) that leverages AR. Our approach processes the external data and generates different types of events through an event generator. Pages rendered on our browser can exploit these CSS and JS events to morph themselves. This enables content developers to provide custom layouts for the web page when viewed through the AR headset, in a way that centers the web objects on the user's field of view whose coordinates are sent to the content provider. The callbacks provided by the browser encapsulate required information like co-ordinates, dimensions and color of the actual web object instead of providing the video stream itself, thus sandboxing the web page yet allowing it to exploit AR capabilities. The actual data stream that the user is viewing is not sent, thus ensuring privacy. We provide details of the implementation and the method to integrate our approach with the Samsung Gear VR headset.