Mobile Augmented Reality Environments Research Articles

The Impact of Teaching the Lives of Scientists in a Mobile Augmented Reality Environment on Students’ Success and Opinions

This research aims to investigate the impact of a Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) application called TISAR-3D on the success and opinions of secondary school students when learning about the lives of scientists. A mixed-method approach was employed. The research was conducted on students in the 7th grade of a public school located in the city center of Elazig, Turkey. The sample consisted of 90 students, comprising 41 girls and 49 boys. The research was conducted with one experimental and one control group. Over the course of eight weeks, the experimental group utilized the TISAR-3D application, while the control group acquired knowledge by reading texts about scientists. The research showed that students using the MAR application had significantly higher academic success than the control group. Interviews with the experimental group supported integrating MAR technology, indicating it improved understanding of science topics and boosted academic success. Teachers are recommended to use the TISAR-3D application in their lessons to enhance students’ learning experiences.

Teaching Turkish-Islamic Scholars in Mobile Augmented Reality Environment: Its Effect on Students' Scientific Attitudes

Science history showcases scientific thought's evolution and discoveries to students. Some topics include abstract concepts, making them challenging. Technology enhances teaching history of science, making it more effective and accessible. This study aims to examine the influence of teaching the lives of Turkish-Islamic scholars who have made significant contributions in various scientific disciplines such as astronomy, chemistry, and physics through TISAR-3D, a Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) based learning environment, on secondary school students' scientific attitudes. A quasi-experimental method was employed in this study. This study was conducted in a public school in Elazığ, involving a total of 90 students in the 7th grade. Half of these students were assigned to the experimental group, while the other half formed the control group. The study was carried out for a duration of eight weeks on the experimental and control groups. The study lasted for eight weeks and consisted of an experiment group and a control group. The TISAR-3D application was used in the experiment group, while reading texts were used in the control group. The data obtained through the Scientific Attitude Scale were analyzed quantitatively using the SPSS 22 software package, and ANCOVA was applied. The study found that although the average scientific attitude scores of students in the experiment group, where the MAR application was used, were higher than the average scores of students in the control group, where reading texts were used, there was no statistically significant difference. Although primary textbooks are accessible to all students, insufficient coverage of Turkish-Islamic scholars and unfamiliarity with practical scholars may explain the lack of significant differences in scientific attitudes. Also, an eight-week study may not sufficiently alter students' scientific attitudes. By designing longer-term studies, a better understanding of how scientific attitudes develop and change over time can be achieved.

A METHODOLOGY FOR MATERIAL-BASED COMPUTATIONAL DESIGN SUPPORTED BY MOBILE AUGMENTED REALITY APPLICATION

To represent design, both physical and digital models are utilized in the process. However, they usually don't function in unison. In order to synchronize these two types of models, the changes made in one model are generally translated into the other one later. This study intends to provide a conceptual framework for a simultaneous and synchronized model for the use of material, structure, and performance in the preliminary design stage. The methodology of the study includes evaluating material attributes, structural systems, and building performance of a physical model in the digital environment by using a Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) interface. Because the cameras in MAR environment are mobile, the range of views can be expanded, and/or designs can be superimposed on user interfaces virtually. Thus, object interaction and navigation are all made possible. By offering a comprehensive, synchronized, and interactive design environment, where material, structure, and performance factors are incorporated both in physical and digital models, the suggested methodology will potentially aid users' decision-making process.

Intelli-AR Preloading: A Learning Approach to Proactive Hologram Transmissions in Mobile AR

Mobile augmented reality (AR), which integrates virtual objects (i.e., holographic contents) with 3-D real environments in real time, has been rapidly gaining popularity in the last five years. The delivery mechanisms of these holographic contents to mobile AR devices, however, are rarely investigated. To combat bandwidth limitations that preclude providing holographic contents to user devices on-demand, in this article, we propose the intelligent AR (Intelli-AR) preloading algorithm to improve transmission efficiency in the edge-assisted network, in which edge servers proactively transmit holographic contents to the devices. Without user devices’ future motion trajectories, the Intelli-AR preloading algorithm models the user devices’ motion trajectories as Markov decision process (MDP) and adaptively learns the optimal preloading policy. The Intelli-AR preloading is decomposed into two parts and separately deployed on the edge server and the user devices to reduce the computation complexity. The Intelli-AR solution improves the ratio of successful preloading by 11.52% compared to the best baseline in the practical data set when the users’ motion trajectories tend to be more random, and by 21.97% compared to the best baseline in the data set which is synthesized from a real-life mobile AR environment.

The SmARtphone Controller

Abstract Current interaction modalities for mobile Augmented Reality (AR) are tedious and lack expressiveness. To overcome these prevalent limitations, we developed and evaluated a multimodal interaction concept by pairing a smartphone as an input and output modality for mobile AR. In a user study (n = 24), we investigated the effects on interaction speed, accuracy, and task load for (1) virtual object manipulation as well as (2) interaction with established graphical user interfaces (GUIs). Our findings show that a smartphone-based AR controller results in significantly faster and more accurate object manipulation with reduced task load than state-of-art mid-air gestures. Our results also indicate a significant enhancement for using the physical touchscreen as a modality compared to mid-air gestures for GUI interaction. We conclude that interaction in mobile AR environments can be improved by utilizing a smartphone as an omnipresent controller. Additionally, we discuss how future AR systems can benefit from tangible touchscreens as an additional and complementary interaction modality.

Virtual Object Manipulation by Combining Touch and Head Interactions for Mobile Augmented Reality

This paper proposes an interaction method to conveniently manipulate a virtual object by combining touch interaction and head movements for a head-mounted display (HMD), which provides mobile augmented reality (AR). A user can conveniently manipulate a virtual object with touch interaction recognized from the inertial measurement unit (IMU) attached to the index finger’s nail and head movements tracked by the IMU embedded in the HMD. We design two interactions that combine touch and head movements, to manipulate a virtual object on a mobile HMD. Each designed interaction method manipulates virtual objects by controlling ray casting and adjusting widgets. To evaluate the usability of the designed interaction methods, a user evaluation is performed in comparison with the hand interaction using Hololens. As a result, the designed interaction method receives positive feedback that virtual objects can be manipulated easily in a mobile AR environment.

MARVisT: Authoring Glyph-Based Visualization in Mobile Augmented Reality.

Recent advances in mobile augmented reality (AR) techniques have shed new light on personal visualization for their advantages of fitting visualization within personal routines, situating visualization in a real-world context, and arousing users' interests. However, enabling non-experts to create data visualization in mobile AR environments is challenging given the lack of tools that allow in-situ design while supporting the binding of data to AR content. Most existing AR authoring tools require working on personal computers or manually creating each virtual object and modifying its visual attributes. We systematically study this issue by identifying the specificity of AR glyph-based visualization authoring tool and distill four design considerations. Following these design considerations, we design and implement MARVisT, a mobile authoring tool that leverages information from reality to assist non-experts in addressing relationships between data and virtual glyphs, real objects and virtual glyphs, and real objects and data. With MARVisT, users without visualization expertise can bind data to real-world objects to create expressive AR glyph-based visualizations rapidly and effortlessly, reshaping the representation of the real world with data. We use several examples to demonstrate the expressiveness of MARVisT. A user study with non-experts is also conducted to evaluate the authoring experience of MARVisT.

A Novel Lightweight Approach for Video Retrieval on Mobile Augmented Reality Environment

Mobile Augmented Reality merges the virtual objects with real world on mobile devices, while video retrieval brings out the similar looking videos from the large-scale video dataset. Since mobile augmented reality application demands the real-time interaction and operation, we need to process and interact in real-time. Furthermore, augmented reality based virtual objects can be poorly textured. In order to resolve the above mentioned issues, in this research, we propose a novel, fast and robust approach for retrieving videos on the mobile augmented reality environment using an image and video queries. In the beginning, Top-K key-frames are extracted from the videos which significantly increases the efficiency. Secondly, we introduce a novel frame based feature extraction method, namely Pyramid Ternary Histogram of Oriented Gradient (PTHOG) to extract the shape feature from the virtual objects in an effective and efficient manner. Thirdly, we utilize the Double-Bit Quantization (DBQ) based hashing to accomplish the nearest neighbor search efficiently, which produce the candidate list of videos. Lastly, the similarity measure is performed to re-rank the videos which are obtained from the candidate list. An extensive experimental analysis is performed in order to verify our claims.

Mobile augmented reality visualization and collaboration techniques for on-site finite element structural analysis

In this paper, a mobile augmented reality (AR) framework for on-site finite element analysis (FEA) is proposed. The proposed framework is achieved using a client–server architecture. The performance of FEA relies on several important components, namely, computational power, visualization technique, and numerical analysis. AR renders intuitive computer-generated contents directly on a user’s surroundings. Integrating FEA with AR helps users through enhancing their perception and interaction with the engineering problems. Correct and effective visualization of these data using an AR platform can reduce the misinterpretation in spatial and logical aspects. Over the past decade, AR has undergone a transition from desktop to phablet computing. Mobile platforms enable user exploration of FEA results in situ. The client side uses a hybrid method to visualize FEA results in the mobile AR environment. In addition, a user can collaborate with other users by using the result sharing function. A prototype with basic functions has been built and a case study has been implemented to demonstrate the visualization method and evaluate the overall performance.

Studying gesture-based interaction on a mobile augmented reality application for co-design activity

Multi-touch user interfaces (MTUIs) of mobile devices can represent a valuable tool for enhancing co-design practice. In particular, mobile augmented reality (AR) technology that enhanced with MTUIs can offer new possibilities to designers to work and collaborate. This paper describes a series of user studies that took place in the Department of Architecture, at the Istanbul Technical University in January 2016. The users tested the developed AR application. The task of the participants was to design mass volumes of buildings in the given contexts. In the first study, the designer worked solo using analogue tools and two different MTUIs of the AR applications. In the second study, the designers collaborated using analogue tools and an enhanced mobile augmented reality environment. The goal of the study is to understand the affordances of the interfaces and the changes onto designers’ behaviour when they are using the mobile AR applications. The particular focus of the paper is on the characterization of the co-design cognition and interaction behaviour of the designers. The collected data from the empirical studies is analysed with the protocol analysis method using a coding scheme. The results show that the studied AR interfaces afford different modelling actions and design behaviour. The design context was broad conceptual and high-level; the intensity of the actions was also different in the AR sessions. We consider that this knowledge would be informative for the development of the innovative augmented reality applications for supporting the design activity and be guidance for the further developments.

Investigating human and technological requirements for successful implementation of a BIM-based mobile augmented reality environment in facility management practices

Purpose – With the facility management industry increasingly adopting building information modeling (BIM) technologies, there is a need to investigate where this industry stands in its application. Moreover, studies on efficient and cost-effective solutions to integrate BIM and mobile augmented reality (MAR) present an environment where facility managers can experience an intuitive natural interaction with their mobile interfaces to efficiently access needed information. The industry’s view on this new approach of accessing information from BIM models should also be investigated, and its feedback should be considered for future phases of this avenue of research. Design/methodology/approach – This paper explores not only how BIM can be beneficial to facility management practitioners, but also how its integration with MAR and making the data accessible through handheld mobile devices can enhance current facility management practices. An online survey was conducted to assess professional facility managers’ characteristics, technology use and working environment as well as the current status of BIM application in their practices. An online video scenario has also been used to illustrate to facility managers how an ideal BIM-MAR-integrated environment could provide them with mobile access to their required information. Facility managers’ feedback on usability, applicability and challenges of such environment has also been investigated through a follow-up survey. Findings – With this paper, industry practitioners as well as academic researchers will be able to understand the current status of BIM and mobile computing application in facility management along with the benefits and challenges of implementing these technologies in an augmented reality (AR) environment. Originality/value – Understanding facility managers’ requirements, characteristics and the way they do their tasks would be of great value for development of tools or systems that would facilitate their practices.

New Trends on Mobile Learning in The Light of Recent Studies

Since the beginning of the century, with the introduction of mobile devices, use of the concept of mobile learning, became frequent, along with e-learning, m-learning, concept began to come on the agenda. It can be said that determining in what proportion and in which axis m-learning concept discussed in the literature would be important for revealing the issues that are not discussed enough. Starting from this basic premise, the purpose of this research is examining the researches in the literature within the last three years, and identifying new approaches. Literature review was limited with ScienceDirect (one of international databases) and Ulakbim (a database from Turkey). In the scope of the research, 45 studies, 37 from Science Direct, 8 from Ulakbim Social Sciences Database were selected. In the study, each article was investigated with document analysis method. Articles were classified and examined. According to five different criteria the results obtained by this research are summarized as follows: Selected works from Turkey are mostly descriptive studies which try to determine students or faculty members’ views. In almost all of these studies the opinions of the students were determined but the information about their past mobile learning experiences is not included in the researches. The studies selected from ScienceDirect have highly diversed subjects, they based on from different disciplines, different learning approaches and mostly try to find out the effectiveness of a developed original environment. In addition, in different subject areas in mobile learning, issues like students' academic achievements, attitudes and perceptions of influence, teacher/teaching staff attitudes or perceptions, adaptable mobile environments, cooperative mobile environments, mobile environments self-regulated learning, mobile environments of information presented in different ways the effects of game-based mobile learning, note-taking with mobile tools, mobile applications in formal education, and mobile augmented reality environments become prominent.