Understanding Augmented Reality ─ Concepts and Applications

Augmented reality is one of the newest innovations in the electronics industry. It is the superimposing of graphics, audio and other sense enhancements onto real-time environments - combining the physical and virtual worlds. Recent examples include the following: on TV, you have the super-imposed first down line in football games; on cell phones, apps now use the phone's camera and GPS capabilities to gather info about one's surrounding area, overlaying this information on the phone's screen.

The essential components of Augmented Reality are simple: A computer (cell phone or laptop), a camera, sensors (GPS, touch, accelerometer, compass) and finally tracking software. But there are so many ways to develop AR technologies. Some applications are dependent on computer vision algorithms; others use other devices such as GPS, gyroscopes, accelerometers and other sensors. Likewise, numerous software libraries are emerging that offer different approaches to AR technologies. It is confusing, at best, trying to determine the best approach to take, and the most appropriate system architecture and software to use when developing your own AR applications.

Enter this book - a technical overview to the entire medium that provides the necessary background of what AR really is, the lay of the land in terms of hardware, software, interaction techniques, content development, and usability concerns to prepare you to create compelling and appropriate AR applications.

• Explore the different techniques and approaches used in developing AR applications. This book helps untangle the seemingly endless different approaches that are being taken in the market today.
• Learn from the author's deep experience in virtual reality and augmented reality applications to succeed right off the bat, and avoid many of the traps that catch new developers.
• Associated website includes: sample projects and additional code, cool application examples available for download, links to interesting applications that support the points being made in the book.