VERIFICATION OF IMAGE BASED AUGMENTED REALITY FOR URBAN VISUALIZATION

Abstract

Recently, visualization of urban scenes with various information attracts attention. For the transmission of urban scenes, virtual reality has been widely used. Since the virtual reality requires comprehensive and detailed three dimensional models, the manual dependent modelling takes a lot of time and effort. On the other hand, it has been tackled that various data is superimposed on the scene which the users see at the time instead of comprehensive modelling, which is well known as augmented reality (AR). Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) has been attempted using simple video cameras for the AR. This method estimates exterior orientation factors of the camera, and three dimensional reconstructions of feature points simultaneously. The method, however, has been applied to only small indoor space. This paper investigates the applicability of the popular method of SALM to wide outdoor space, and improves the stability of the method. Through the application, the tracked feature points successfully are greatly reduced compared with application in indoor environment. According to the experimental result, simple markers or GPS are introduced as auxiliary information. The markers gives the stability of optimization, and GPS gives real scale to AR spaces. Additionally, feature points tracking method is modified by assigning amplitude of displacement and depth. The effect of the markers and GPS are confirmed. On the other hand, some limitations of the method are understood. As a result, more impressive visualization will be accomplished.