Data Management for Augmented Reality Applications

Abstract

Augmented Reality is a new technology that combines real and virtual environments. In general glasses with attached displays are used to produce visual augmentations of the user’s environment. These so-called head mounted displays are able to project virtual objects that are registered with the real world of the user.

The DWARF project is conducted at the Chair for Applied Software Engineering of the Technische Universität München and tries to use methods from software engineering to reuse components for faster prototypical implementation of new components.

DWARF consists of a set of software services that act on mobile distributed hardware and can communicate via wireless or wired networks. This communication allows to carry per-sonalized mobile devices with embedded services, while intelligent environments provide location based services. The services discover each other and dynamically cooperate to provide desired functionality, which is required for Augmented Reality applications.

A critical issue of Augmented Reality is the large quantity of data, which must be managed in a distributed system. This data must be reliably delivered to services that provide user access on that data. The handled data must be in a consistent state allover the system. Database systems can be used for parts of the management of data to guarantee persis-tence and efficient handling.

This thesis deals with data management for distributed Augmented Reality systems. The main contribution of this thesis is a novel approach of dynamic services, that give the user transparent access to all necessary data. The developed design has prototypically been implemented and tested within the ARCHIE application. ARCHIE states a project to support architectural modeling by Augmented Reality.

By further development a set of general usable services can be realized that allows to use Augmented Reality in new areas.