MaFischer

Chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures & Augmented Reality
Lehrstuhl für Informatikanwendungen in der Medizin & Augmented Reality

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Spatial Context Management for Augmented Reality in Vehicles

Master's Thesis
Aufgabenstellerin: Prof. Gudrun Klinker
Betreuer: Dipl.-Inf. Marcus Tönnis

Introduction

The aim of this Master's Thesis is the investigation and implementation of suitable approaches and methods with respect to the management of spatial context information which appear in varying traffic situations. The project uses the DWARF middleware (Distributed Wearable Augmented Reality Framework) which supports a communication infrastructure for distributed Augmented Reality applications based on collaborating DWARF services. For acquiring basic input data and also for demonstrating the research efforts an existing driving simulator will be adressed by the system.

Defintions

As defined by Abowd and Dey context can be seen as any kind of information which describes the situation of an entity like a person, a location or an object so that it is important for the interaction between the user and the context-aware application. Context information is extremely diverse. E.g. among many other things the following listed items are part of context:
circumstance, situation, phase, position, attitude, location, destination, environment, conditions, reputation, status, opportunity, cause, dependencies, previously acquired context

This project concentrates on context information with a direct spatial reference.

  • examples for basic spatial context: location, orientation, speed, acceleration
  • examples for interpreted and aggregated spatial context information: traffic jam in 100 meters, possible risk for rear-end collision by a sudden deceleration of the car in front

Requirements

Here are the requirements for dealing with context by context-aware applications:
  • distinction between continous acquisition of contextual data and usage of context
  • aggregation and interpretation of context
  • handling inconsistencies between contextual information
  • context storage and recovery
  • resource discovery
  • safety and privacy

Distributed context-aware AR applications need support for distributing context information as well. So another part of this Master's Thesis is to investigate this topic with respect to spatial contextual data.

Master's Thesis: SCORE - Spatial Context Ontology Reasoning Environment

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ProjectForm
Title: Spatial Context Management for Augmented Reality Applications
Abstract: The thesis describes the development of the Spatial Context Ontology Reasoning Environment (SCORE), that supports the management of explicit and implicit spatial context for Augmented Reality applications.

Augmented Reality (AR) forms the link between reality and Virtual Reality by augmenting the user's environment with virtual objects and information, that can be interacted with. Here in general head-mounted displays are used to present the augmented view to the user.

This research field is investigated at the chair for Computer Aided Medical Procedures and Augmented Reality at the Technische Universität München. Among many other things it covers new user interaction paradigms, sensor analysis and the access to structured information in intelligent environments. A common claim to Augmented Reality systems is not to restrict the users' scope of motion. For supporting mobility the DWARF framework is frequently employed. It represents a distributed AR framework providing ad hoc interoperability of services, that self-assemble into AR systems.

AR applications must efficiently handle spatial information of real and virtual objects in order to provide a “natural” feeling of the augmented world to the user. In addition to the mere location-awareness they involve situational aspects that are related to the user more and more. As a matter of fact the management of spatial context increasingly gains importance to applications in AR.

This thesis presents a service-oriented framework that is aimed at facilitating the integration of these aspects. It follows a novel approach in spatial context management, that incorporates traditional coordinate-based context models and contextual ontologies that are well-known from research efforts with respect to the Semantic Web. Thus efficiency is combined with a declarative knowledge representation enabling knowledge sharing and reuse.
Besides the explanation and discussion of the general research topics, the work is based on, the thesis presents a first application using the presented framework. It is a proactive safety system for vehicles, and is part of an interdisciplinary research project for user-centered driver assistance, that is supported by techniques of Augmented Reality.
Student: Jan-Gregor Fischer
Director: Prof. Gudrun Klinker
Supervisor: Marcus Tönnis
Type: DA/MA/BA
Status: finished
Start: 2004/10/15
Finish: 2005/05/15

I Attachment sort Action Size Date Who Comment
SpatialThing.owl manage 3.9 K 13 Sep 2005 - 09:45 MarcusToennis The OWL base resource with respect to SCORE.
RuleBase.owl manage 3.3 K 13 Sep 2005 - 09:46 MarcusToennis The OWL rule base used by SCORE.
MobileThing.owl manage 2.1 K 13 Sep 2005 - 09:46 MarcusToennis This resource defines mobile thing OWL classes.
DataTypes.xsd manage 0.9 K 13 Sep 2005 - 09:46 MarcusToennis Additional data types used by OWL resources
SpatextRuleLanguage.xsd manage 1.3 K 13 Sep 2005 - 09:46 MarcusToennis Defines the rule language with respect to SCORE.

Edit | Attach | Refresh | Diffs | More | Revision r1.23 - 02 Jan 2006 - 23:00 - MarcusToennis