Augmented Reality

Augmented reality is a presentation of a live view of a real world atmosphere where the objects are augmented with illusory modelled graphical objects. Augmented reality is a term used for a wide range of technologies aimed at the virtual world integration of content and live data with real time media like information, sound, images, videos, and 3D graphics (Gene, 2010).

Augmented reality applications have three main characteristics

• Combine real and virtual world,
• Interactive in real time,
• Registered in 3D.

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality (VR) are closely related yet not the same thing. VR is a procedure of planning a complete virtual world with or less difference to the actual real environment. To put it another way, you can consider VR the precursor to AR (Sood, 2012), with a few sections overlapping in both. The principle difference between the two technologies is that VR does not use a camera feed which is generally attained by peripheral devices like VR helmet or goggles similar to a head-mounted display.

AR applications were typically used in personal computers due to requirement of processing power. As years go by, the AR has been extraordinarily upgraded. Meanwhile the mobile devices, Such as smartphone, notes and tablets have indicated enhancements to its hardware and software capabilities. It has basically turned into a feasible platform for Augmented Reality applications.

Technologies for manipulating 3D objects

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that permits a user to see an expansion of the real world, with virtual objects. There are two primary types of AR visual tracking approaches

 - Marker Based 
- Marker less

Marker Based

Augmented reality markers are images that can be detected by a camera and used with software as the location for virtual assets placed in a scene. A Smartphone camera is used with AR software to detect augmented reality markers as the location for Virtual objects. The result is that an image can be viewed, even live, on a scene and digital assets are placed into the scene at the location of the markers (Raju Rathod, George Philip.C, Vijay kumar B.P, 2014). The Figure 4 shows the Marker based Augmented Reality approach on mobile device. 

Simple Markers

Marker less

In marker less AR the image is gathered through internet and displayed on any specific location i.e. by using GPS. This application does not require marker to display the content. The Figure 5 shows the marker less Augmented Reality approach on a mobile device.

Marker less

While marker based approaches or commercial tracking systems give a vigorous and stable solution for controlled situations. It is not possible to prepare a bigger outside space with fiducially markers. Marker less tracking systems requires more processing power than Marker based approaches.