M. Clothier and M. Bailey (USA)
Scientific Visualization, Augmented Reality, Health Monitoring of Structures, Applications
Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging visualization technology that promises to change the way people see the world. The main goal of AR is to "enhance" a person's vision of the real world with useful information about the surrounding environment. Primarily this can be done through the use of a portable computer such as a laptop and a head-mounted display (HMD) unit. When such technology is made available to scientists and engineers, Augmented Reality can provide them with the freedom to do scientific analysis at the actual location of an experiment. With this idea in mind, the goal of this paper is to investigate the development of an AR system as a visualization tool for structural engineers. This particular application will focus on monitoring the "health" of the Kings Stormwater Bridge structure. Unfortunately, since AR is still in its infancy, much of the research devoted to it has focused mainly on technical issues rather than on the development of how this technology would be used by scientists. This has led to the development of "functional" AR systems that primarily can only be operated by the developer of the system ([1], [2], [3], [12], [14]). This paper avoids this trend by focusing on the design of the visualization system so that it is useful for structural engineers. As a result, this should produce a more robust Augmented Reality system that can be used by many different users. Thus, it is the goal of this paper to show how scientists would benefit by designing a visualization system with their needs in mind.
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