The Ins and Outs of Augmented Reality

The hardware on the device is mostly going to be used for two things, motion tracking and processing/running the AR program. Thanks to modern technology, we have a lot of processing power in very tiny chips that can handle the pressure. So what specifically do we need to track motion?

Well, mainly these three components:

But AR doesn’t simply stop there! AR is taken to the real world and made even more immersive though Location-Based AR! This is quite groundbreaking when you think of all the implications it brings with it. Location-Based AR is basically AR experiences that are specific to a certain location such as seeing superimposed animals specifically at a zoo, or AR dinosaurs in a museum.

To make that into a reality, mainly two hardware components work together.

When we talk about AR software in phones, two names are buzzing the industry. They are ARKit by Apple and ARCore by Google. On a technical scale, both SDKs are the same. So to make this as unrepetitive and less boring as possible, I’ll explain ARCore instead of explaining both of them.

ARCore integrates virtual content with the real world as seen through your phone’s camera and shown on your phone’s display using technologies like environmental understanding, light estimation, and motion tracking.

Environmental understanding is the process by which ARCore sees objects in your surroundings and uses that information to properly place and orient digital objects. They use anchor points in order to superimpose images at a location relative to the anchor points.

ARCore needs to know when you move. The general technology behind this is called Simultaneous Localization And Mapping or SLAM.

SLAM require data from hardware like cameras, depth sensors, light sensors, gyroscopes, and accelerometers. ARCore uses all of these to create a digital foundation of your environment and uses that information to render augmented reality experiences by detecting planes and points to set appropriate anchors. AR Core uses a process called Concurrent Odometry and Mapping or COM. That might sound complex, but basically, COM tells a smartphone where it’s located in relation to the world around it.

Motion tracking uses your phone’s camera, internal gyroscope, and accelerometer to estimate its position in 3D space in real time. However,

There are two basic ways to track the position and orientation of a device or user: Outside-In tracking(mostly used for VR) and Inside-Out tracking.

Outside-in tracking uses external cameras or sensors, placed at different parts of a specific space to detect motion and track positioning. This way offers more precise tracking, but a drawback is the external sensors lower the portability. But this is ideal for a true AR experience since some of the hardware is separate, the power of running the AR experience is increased.

Inside-out tracking uses cameras or sensors in the device itself to track its position in the real world. This method requires more hardware in the AR device but offers more portability. One drawback of this is there is only so much power you can have in a device as small as a smartphone. The size and processing power of the hardware in smartphones often limit it’s AR experiences.

Some things to consider while developing AR experiences are placing, scale/size, occlusion(when superimposed images are blocking another object and they don’t appear natural), lighting/shadows, all that while keeping in mind environmental awareness. Often times it becomes really hard to find the perfect balance within all these factors to make the AR experience as immersive and seamless as possible to the viewer.

Stay tuned for my upcoming articles!

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