Augmented Reality (AR) Research at Surrey

The aim of this work is to develop Augmented Reality (AR) systems and tools for aiding teleoperation in remote and/or hazardous environments. The work is closely allied with our development of high performance robotic stereo heads for remote immersive stereo viewing, and also with additional work in tele-operation and haptic sensing. Our AR system is used to present supplemental information about a remote environment which cannot be sensed directly when viewed using the immersive stereo viewing system. Data gathered from sensors located in the remote environment, is fused with graphical models and presented as graphical images overlaid on the stereo video images from the remote stereo robotic camera head. Using a virtual stereographic cursor the operator is able to interact with objects in the remote world and can determine absolute dimensional information.

Our Augmented Reality system is constructed from off-the-shelf hardware and the graphical overlays are generated using the runtime virtual reality software World Toolkit from Sense8. This utilisation of off-the-shelf hardware and software allows rapid prototyping and development. Current sponsors of this work are the EPSRC (Grant GR/L63198) and DERA Chertsey. Current collaborators also include North West Water, and Virtual Presence Ltd . Our application areas include the interactive 3D examination of sewer pipes.

MSRR people involved with AR are Alison Wheeler, Lindsay Hitchin, Dr Vesna Brujic-Okretic, Dr John Pretove, and Prof Graham Parker.

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Last change: April 2000