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Interactive Media Systems, TU Wien

An Authoring Framework for Augmented Reality Presentations

Thesis by Florian Ledermann

Supervision by Dieter Schmalstieg

Abstract

In this thesis, the design of APRIL, an XML-based language to create con\-tent-rich Augmented Reality (AR) applications and interactive presentations, is presented. The state of the art of hardware and software for AR systems is analyzed, to deduce the key concepts and features of APRIL. One central feature of APRIL is the separation of an application's content from the description of the hardware configuration the application should run on. This will allow users to run the same application with different hardware configurations, either reflecting different target platforms, or to replace the original target platform by a simulation environment in the development and testing phase.

While the question of content creation for AR applications has only recently moved into the focus of researchers, for other platforms like interactive CD-ROMs or web applications there is already a number of different approaches to create complex interactive presentations. These approaches are analyzed and compared, and the concept of using UML-statecharts as storyboards for interactive presentations is introduced. For APRIL, the storyboard, represented by a hierarchical concurrent state machine, will be the central document around which a presentation's content is arranged.

A prototype implementation of an APRIL player software, realized by transforming APRIL files into configuration files for the Studierstube AR system, is also presented. With this prototype implementation, several presentations for different AR setups have already been developed. APRIL allowed the authors of these presentations to realize them with much less effort than with a conventional approach, while at the same time providing increased flexibility and debugging possibilities.

Reference

F. Ledermann: "An Authoring Framework for Augmented Reality Presentations"; Supervisor: D. Schmalstieg; Inst. für Softwaretechnik und Interaktive Systeme, 2004.

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