Develop Augmented Reality Applications Research Articles

Augmented reality for chemical engineering education

Augmented reality (AR) technology has emerged as a highly beneficial tool in the educational context, and its potential impact on chemical engineering teaching is notable. This study addresses AR as an accessible and effective alternative for representing complex concepts and safely visualizing industrial processes in the area. By incorporating immersive resources, AR provides an innovative means of teaching and promotes greater engagement among students, contributing to improved learning and the development of interpersonal, investigation, and autonomy skills. This study systematically reviews the literature on the application of augmented reality in chemical engineering. Twenty-two articles in the Scopus and Web of Science databases were chosen, and a bibliometric analysis was used to extract the data in the discussions. The results highlighted the success of AR applications, predominantly employed in disciplines such as molecular chemistry, unit operations, transport phenomena, and practical chemistry. Mobile devices, such as smartphones and tablets, were the most common means of implementing these applications. The positive perception of students and teachers was evident, with both agreeing that the integration of AR contributed significantly to improving learning and facilitated the understanding of more challenging concepts. As a result of this research, a framework was developed that outlines the steps necessary to develop AR applications to teach chemical engineering effectively. This framework can serve as a valuable guide for future initiatives in this field, providing a solid framework for creating and successfully implementing AR-based educational resources.

DeepReality: An open source framework to develop AI-based augmented reality applications

Augmented reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are technologies pioneers in innovation and alteration in several domains. AR allows the creation of an entirely new and interactive experience for users. However, there are several drawbacks in developing AR applications, such as the marker identification process and the creation of content itself. These are very time-consuming procedures and require ad-hoc development. The advantages of using AI to solve AR limitations have recently been explored in literature. Motivated by these findings, in this paper it is proposed DeepReality, a software toolkit plug-in for Unity 3D. It is conceived for allowing developers to integrate any Deep Learning (DL) models into Unity, through AR Foundation and Barracuda inference engine. DeepReality is aimed at simplifying and streamlining the usage of DL models in conjunction with AR. As such, users skilled in Unity and DL can easily create mobile applications (iOS and Android) to: extract visual features of real-world objects (framed with the device camera) via DL; Show on-screen content on top of those real-world objects, via AR. DeepReality performs object semantic processing within the scene, and extended semantic effects for incongruent objects, overcoming the environmental tracking, which is feature-based. In order to test DeepReality usability, experiments have been performed on the execution time and memory usage data, demonstrating the feasibility and possibility of integrating and using DNNs models in mobile applications for AR. The complexity analysis confirms that DeepReality can be completely executed on mobile devices. DeepReality is also open-source and it is freely available in the Unity asset store. By fostering accessible AI-AR integration, DeepReality addresses key shortcomings in existing approaches, encapsulating contributions such as versatile DL integration, open-source accessibility, operational validation, and comprehensive metrics analysis. DeepReality empowers developers to transcend boundaries, enriching AR applications with AI’s transformative potential. Our proposed framework fosters benchmarking, comparison, and a future harmonised by AR-AI synergy.

Effect of Transparency Levels and Real-World Backgrounds on the User Interface in Augmented Reality Environments

With the introduction of the metaverse, augmented reality (AR) is expected to become the next interface between people and computers. Research is conducted to improve the usability of AR applications and devices. Color transparency and background effect are the two critical factors to consider while developing AR applications. Ten user interface conditions (5 color transparency levels × 2 background conditions) were evaluated in an AR environment. The task completion time and mean error were noted along with the subjective scores of button visibility, background visibility, and motion sickness. The results revealed a significant difference in task completion time, button visibility, and background visibility between transparency conditions, but not in the number of errors and total motion sickness. The transparency level of T0.5 and T0.75 is recommended for the interface of AR applications. This study could be helpful when creating augmented reality applications for the metaverse and other platforms.

In-Depth Review of Augmented Reality: Tracking Technologies, Development Tools, AR Displays, Collaborative AR, and Security Concerns.

Augmented reality (AR) has gained enormous popularity and acceptance in the past few years. AR is indeed a combination of different immersive experiences and solutions that serve as integrated components to assemble and accelerate the augmented reality phenomena as a workable and marvelous adaptive solution for many realms. These solutions of AR include tracking as a means for keeping track of the point of reference to make virtual objects visible in a real scene. Similarly, display technologies combine the virtual and real world with the user's eye. Authoring tools provide platforms to develop AR applications by providing access to low-level libraries. The libraries can thereafter interact with the hardware of tracking sensors, cameras, and other technologies. In addition to this, advances in distributed computing and collaborative augmented reality also need stable solutions. The various participants can collaborate in an AR setting. The authors of this research have explored many solutions in this regard and present a comprehensive review to aid in doing research and improving different business transformations. However, during the course of this study, we identified that there is a lack of security solutions in various areas of collaborative AR (CAR), specifically in the area of distributed trust management in CAR. This research study also proposed a trusted CAR architecture with a use-case of tourism that can be used as a model for researchers with an interest in making secure AR-based remote communication sessions.

Applications of Augmented Reality in Neurology: Architectural Model and Guidelines

Neurology is considered as one of the most challenging fields of medical science due to the complexity of the nervous system in human body. The treatment processes of the patients suffering from neurological disorders are greatly influenced by the advancements in technology. In this regard, the infusion of augmented reality (AR) has immensely improved patients’ and healthcare workers’ experiences in the field of neurology. Several efforts are being made by the community to introduce various applications of AR for patients as well as for healthcare workers in neurology. This study systematically examines the applications of AR in neurology and synthesizes their uses and impacts in the treatment and assistance of the patients suffering from neurological disorders as well as in the assistance of healthcare workers. The results reveal that most of the AR applications are used for motor disorders while lesser systems are designed for patients with degenerative diseases, most of them being task assistance systems. Moreover, the use of AR applications leaves both long-term and short-term impacts in improving the quality of patient’s life. Furthermore, there is a need of introducing more interactive AR systems for patients with degenerative diseases as well as exploring the possibility of using such systems for mental rehabilitation. It has also been identified that there is a potential to develop AR applications for healthcare workers, to train and assist them through simulations. In addition to reviewing the AR applications, this work proposes a taxonomy of AR applications in neurology with different dimensions including scope of AR, type of neurological disorder, and impact of AR assistance on patient’s life. Furthermore, this article also highlights challenges the patients with neurological disorders face while using AR applications. Based on the identified challenges, a model has been proposed for application designers and developers to help them develop more useful AR systems. An AR applications architecture has also been suggested for designing the AR systems for patients suffering specifically from degenerative or movement neuro-disorders. Lastly, this article presents some directions for future work in terms of AR usage in neuroscience.

A Systematic Review of Augmented Reality Applications in Language Learning

Augmented reality (AR) is one of the emerging technologies gradually venturing into the education field. Although AR is strongly linked to subjects related to Science, Mathematics, and Technology in schools and tertiary education, there is no mention of AR in non-technical subjects, such as language. Thus, this study aims to discover the AR application trends in language learning and the language skills prevalent in AR usage. In this systematic literature review, AR-related research in language learning began in 2016 and has continued to be on the rise. Furthermore, the preferred language skills used with AR technology required lower cognitive levels, such as identifying words, understanding meanings, and spelling, and pronouncing words. Based on the gap indicating the rare usage of AR for more complex and critical language skills, such as reading and writing, this study hopes to enlighten the researchers, educators, and application developers to focus on developing AR applications for languages other than English, incorporate higher-order learning outcomes in the language learning activities, and pursue qualitative investigations.

Towards commissioning, resilience and added value of Augmented Reality in robotics: Overcoming technical obstacles to industrial applicability

Augmented Reality (AR) has the potential for facilitating the interaction with robots by enhancing the operator’s spatial understanding as well as providing further cognitive support, e.g. in order to make manual programming processes more efficient and provide on-site simulation. However, we consider major issues that prevent a widespread use of AR towards robotics in industries. Initially, the commissioning of AR devices for robotic applications demands spatial referencing of robots and AR devices. Fiducial markers are a popular artificial aid, but hard to implement in industrial use cases because of additional efforts and a lack of robustness. A further bottleneck for developing AR applications in robotics is the restricted technical and ergonomic maturity of AR devices, e.g. limited local computation and short product life-cycles. Furthermore, benefit through AR in comparison to classic online and offline programming techniques is still unclear for most applicators. In this paper, we present approaches towards a distributed, hardware-agnostic microservice architecture with standard interfaces for an interoperable usage of AR in robotics. Furthermore, we present marker-less pose estimation methods for articulated robot arms as well as mobile robots based on RGB and depth images that serve automatic referencing. Finally, we reveal further application potential of AR in robotics in terms of combining advantages from online and offline programming.

Affordable augmented reality for smartphones

Currently, scientists identify such a basic human need as information hunger. This means that a person strives to obtain a certain amount of information every day. However, it should not just be the volume of any information, it also has various requirements, such as: volume, reliability, saturation, openness, value and timeliness. In order to ensure the need for rapid access to information, the trend towards the development of digital technologies is becoming increasingly evident in the modern world. The development of information access technologies has led to the creation of many ways to provide a person with the information they requested quickly and efficiently, but the most modern means include virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies. While virtual reality technologies provide a potentially larger amount of information, augmented reality technologies are more in demand in everyday life, because, unlike VR technologies, they allow the user to observe the real world with the addition of the information he needs. When developing this technology, the goal has always been to most effectively recognize objects in the information field and bring them into the field of view of the operator. The hardware part of the implementation of this technology must have a camera and a monitor. The most common and affordable digital device is a smartphone that fully meets the requirements of this technology. The article discusses the current state of AR technology, primarily the means of developing AR applications for Android. To write any applications, in particular, AR applications for Android, you must use a set of development tools (Softaware Development Kit), otherwise the SDK.

Comparing software frameworks of Augmented Reality solutions for manufacturing

Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that allows overlaying of virtual elements on top of the physical environment. This enhances the perception and conveys additional information to the user. With the emergence of industry 4.0 concepts in manufacturing landscape, AR found its way to improve existing Human-Machine Interfaces (HMI) on the shop-floor. The industrial setting has a wide variety of application opportunities from AR, ranging from training and digital work instructions to quality inspection and remote maintenance. Even though its implementation in the industry is rising in popularity, it is still mainly restricted to large companies due the limited availability of resources in Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SME). However, SMEs can benefit from AR solutions in its production processes. Therefore, this research aims to develop and present the results of comparison of two simple and cost-effective AR software frameworks for Hand Held Device (HHD) and a Head Mounted Device (HMD), which can be applied for developing AR applications for manufacturing. Two AR applications are developed using these software frameworks which are presented in the case study section. Android device is chosen as a HHD and HoloLens is the HMD used in the case study. The development structure can be reproduced by a wider range of enterprises with diverse needs and resource availability.

Interactive Multi-User 3D Visual Analytics in Augmented Reality

With the development of Apple’s ARKit and Google’s ARCore, mobile augmented reality (AR) applications have become much more popular. For Android devices, ARCore provides basic motion tracking and environmental understanding. However, with current software frameworks it can be difficult to create an AR application from the ground up. Our solution is CalAR, which is a lightweight, open-source software environment to develop AR applications for Android devices, while giving the programmer full control over the phone’s resources. With CalAR, the programmer can create marker-less AR applications which run at 60 frames per second on Android smartphones. These applications can include more complex environment understanding, physical simulation, user interaction with virtual objects, and interaction between virtual objects and objects in the physical environment. With CalAR being based on CalVR, which is our multi-platform virtual reality software engine, it is possible to port CalVR applications to an AR environment on Android phones with minimal effort. We demonstrate this with the example of a spatial visualization application.

Usability Principles for Augmented Reality based Kindergarten Applications

Abstract Augmented Reality (AR) overlays digital information over user’s real world. Designing and developing AR applications is a difficult task. It involves user interface designing, content generation according to the target audience so that the application is easy to understand, interactive, consistent and ease to use. To design these applications there are many design principles evidenced in existing literature such as learnability, affordance, simplicity etc. However, there are no studies in the literature which define most appropriate usability principles/guidelines for designing mobile based AR applications for kindergarten kids. Age is a significant factor to be considered in developing applications for kids especially when it comes to interaction techniques to be used in learning applications. The kids may not easily use and interact with the applications developed for the adults. Therefore, there is a need to identify the principles that should be kept in mind while developing AR applications according to the kids. The aim of our research is to develop usability principles for mobile based applications for kindergarten kids using AR. We proposed 23 usability principles by studying the existing literature on usability, design principles for AR applications, guidelines/principles for tangible interfaces. These principles would help other researcher and developers to create more interactive, learnable and easy to understand AR applications for kids solving the identified usability problems.

Teachers’ evaluation of MotionAR: An augmented reality-based motion graphing application

This research presents the results of the initial evaluation of MotionAR: an augmented reality (AR) based motion graphing application for physics classes. MotionAR uses AR trackers to measure relative motion between objects, hence producing a motion graph. The subject of the evaluation is an improved version of our application that addresses recommendations from the first prototype. Among these recommendations were: the use of words instead of arrows to identify targets, the use of the Cartesian coordinate system, and previews of the displacement vs. time, velocity vs. time and acceleration vs. time graphs. In-service teachers used a 10-item questionnaire for evaluation. The teacher-evaluators come from diverse educational backgrounds (rural and urban schools, 0 to 24 years in teaching, no e-learning model in school vs 1:1 student-to-tablet PC ratio, science vs. non-science majors) which makes the initial evaluation a good baseline data. This ongoing research will present the lessons learned from the evaluation, including insights in developing AR applications for physics classes, and recommendations for teaching motion graphs utilizing AR.

EAR: Enhanced Augmented Reality System for Sports Entertainment Applications

Augmented Reality (AR) overlays virtual information on real world data, such as displaying useful information on videos/images of a scene. This paper presents an Enhanced AR (EAR) system that displays useful statistical players’ information on captured images of a sports game. We focus on the situation where the input image is degraded by strong sunlight. Proposed EAR system consists of an image enhancement technique to improve the accuracy of subsequent player and face detection. The image enhancement is followed by player and face detection, face recognition, and players’ statistics display. First, an algorithm based on multi-scale retinex is proposed for image enhancement. Then, to detect players’ and faces’, we use adaptive boosting and Haar features for feature extraction and classification. The player face recognition algorithm uses boosted linear discriminant analysis to select features and nearest neighbor classifier for classification. The system can be adjusted to work in different types of sports where the input is an image and the desired output is display of information nearby the recognized players. Simulations are carried out on 2096 different images that contain players in diverse conditions. Proposed EAR system demonstrates the great potential of computer vision based approaches to develop AR applications.

A Pilot Study on the Use of Mobile Augmented Reality for Interactive Experimentation in Quadratic Equations

Recent studies have reported that the inclusion of new technological elements such as augmented reality (AR), for educational purposes, increases the learning interest and motivation of students. However, developing AR applications, especially with mobile content, is still a rather technical subject; thus the dissemination of the technology in the classroom has been rather limited. This paper presents a new software architecture for AR application development based on freely available components; it provides a detailed view of the subsystems and tasks that encompass the creation of a mobile AR application. The typical task of plotting a quadratic equation was selected as a case study to obtain feasibility insights on how AR could support the teaching-learning process and to observe the student’s reaction to the technology and the particular application. The pilot study was conducted with 59 students at a Mexican undergraduate school. A questionnaire was created in order to obtain information about the students’ experience using the AR application and the analysis of the results obtained is presented. The comments expressed by the users after the AR experience are positive, supporting the premise that AR can be, in the future, a valuable complimentary teaching tool for topics that benefit from contextual learning experience and multipoint visualization, such as the quadratic equation.