Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) is one of today's fastest-growing areas of computer science and application development. AR overlays computer-generated information on views of the real world, amplifying human perception and cognition in remarkable new ways. (Ever see the virtual first down marker" in TV football games? That's AR -- and AR apps are rapidly coming to millions of smartphones, too.) Working in AR requires knowledge of recent advances in multiple fields, including computer vision, computer graphics, and HCI. Augmented Reality: Principles and Practice integrates all this knowledge into one, single-source reference, presenting the most significant AR work with scrupulous accuracy. For more than a decade, Dieter Schmalstieg has pioneered both AR theory and application, and now, in this book with Tobias H. Hollerer, he addresses all aspects of the field, illuminating AR from both technical and HCI perspectives. The authors review AR's technical foundations, including display and tracking technologies; show how AR emerges from the symbiosis of computer vision and computer graphics, introduce AR-specific visualization and 3D interaction techniques, and showcase applications from diverse industries. They conclude by introducing AR smartphone development, including a cutting-edge Qualcomm QCAR case study. This book will be an indispensable resource for everyone interested in AR, including software and apps developers, managers, students and instructors in the computing disciplines it requires, researchers, and hobbyists. For use in educational environments, the authors provide a companion website containing slides, code examples, and other source materials.