We present “It's a Pirate's Life” demonstration, an Augmented Reality (AR) game which makes use of real-time 3D reconstruction and tracking using an Intel® RealSense™ camera system embedded in a tablet to build a dynamic game world. Players can play as a pirate ship captain searching for gold on a virtual sea overlaid on the real-world. Real-world objects become part of the play space; islands in the tropical seas which you have to navigate your ships around while avoiding cannon balls to find the treasure. Players control the wind, and hence, direction of sail by moving the tablet around the play space to guide the virtual ship in the real and virtual environment to the pirate gold.

Sensors, processors, and radios can be integrated invisibly into objects to make them smart and sensitive to user interaction, but feedback is often limited to beeps, blinks, or buzzes. We propose to redress this input-output imbalance by augmentation of smart objects with projected displays, that—unlike physical displays—allow seamless integration with the natural appearance of an object. In this article, we investigate how, in a ubiquitous computing world, smart objects can acquire and control a projection. We consider that projectors and cameras are ubiquitous in the environment, and we develop a novel conception and system that enables smart objects to spontaneously associate with projector-camera systems for cooperative augmentation. Projector-camera systems are conceived as generic, supporting standard computer vision methods for different appearance cues, and smart objects provide a model of their appearance for method selection at runtime, as well as sensor observations to constrain the visual detection process. Cooperative detection results in accurate location and pose of the object, which is then tracked for visual augmentation in response to display requests by the smart object. In this article, we define the conceptual framework underlying our approach; report on computer vision experiments that give original insight into natural appearance-based detection of everyday objects; show how object sensing can be used to increase speed and robustness of visual detection; describe and evaluate a fully implemented system; and describe two smart object applications to illustrate the system's cooperative augmentation process and the embodied interactions it enables with smart objects.

We present a novel yet simple technique that mitigates the interference caused when multiple structured light depth cameras point at the same part of a scene. The technique is particularly useful for Kinect, where the structured light source is not modulated. Our technique requires only mechanical augmentation of the Kinect, without any need to modify the internal electronics, firmware or associated host software. It is therefore simple to replicate. We show qualitative and quantitative results highlighting the improvements made to interfering Kinect depth signals. The camera frame rate is not compromised, which is a problem in approaches that modulate the structured light source. Our technique is non-destructive and does not impact depth values or geometry. We discuss uses for our technique, in particular within instrumented rooms that require simultaneous use of multiple overlapping fixed Kinect cameras to support whole room interactions.

Using a Microsoft Kinect camera, the KinectFusion system enables a low-cost way for a user to digitally reconstruct a whole room and its contents within seconds. As the space is explored, new views of the arbitrary scene and objects are revealed and these are fused into a single 3D model. The 6DoF pose of the camera is tracked in real-time using a method which directly uses the point-based depth data of Kinect, and requires no feature extraction or feature tracking. Once the 3D pose of the camera is known, each depth measurement from the sensor can be integrated into a volumetric representation. Kinect Fusion enables many Augmented Reality applications and 3D interaction such as multi-touch on arbitrary shaped surfaces.

Today's environments are populated with a growing number of electric devices which come in diverse form factors and provide a plethora of functions. However, rich interaction with these devices can become challenging if they need be controlled from a distance, or are too small to accommodate user interfaces on their own. In this work, we explore PICOntrol, a new approach using an off-the-shelf handheld pico projector for direct control of physical devices through visible light. The projected image serves a dual purpose by simultaneously presenting a visible interface to the user, and transmitting embedded control information to inexpensive sensor units integrated with the devices. To use PICOntrol, the user points the handheld projector at a target device, overlays a projected user interface on its sensor unit, and performs various GUI-style or gestural interactions. PICOntrol enables direct, visible, and rich interactions with various physical devices without requiring central infrastructure. We present our prototype implementation as well as explorations of its interaction space through various application examples.

We present a system for accurate real-time mapping of complex and arbitrary indoor scenes in variable lighting conditions, using only a moving low-cost depth camera and commodity graphics hardware. We fuse all of the depth data streamed from a Kinect sensor into a single global implicit surface model of the observed scene in real-time. The current sensor pose is simultaneously obtained by tracking the live depth frame relative to the global model using a coarse-to-fine iterative closest point (ICP) algorithm, which uses all of the observed depth data available. We demonstrate the advantages of tracking against the growing full surface model compared with frame-to-frame tracking, obtaining tracking and mapping results in constant time within room sized scenes with limited drift and high accuracy. We also show both qualitative and quantitative results relating to various aspects of our tracking and mapping system. Modelling of natural scenes, in real-time with only commodity sensor and GPU hardware, promises an exciting step forward in augmented reality (AR), in particular, it allows dense surfaces to be reconstructed in real-time, with a level of detail and robustness beyond any solution yet presented using passive computer vision.

We present Vermeer, a novel interactive 360° viewable 3D display. Like prior systems in this area, Vermeer provides viewpoint-corrected, stereoscopic 3D graphics to simultaneous users, 360° around the display, without the need for eyewear or other user instrumentation. Our goal is to over-come an issue inherent in these prior systems which - typically due to moving parts - restrict interactions to outside the display volume. Our system leverages a known optical illusion to demonstrate, for the first time, how users can reach into and directly touch 3D objects inside the display volume. Vermeer is intended to be a new enabling technology for interaction, and we therefore describe our hardware implementation in full, focusing on the challenges of combining this optical configuration with an existing approach for creating a 360° viewable 3D display. Initially we demonstrate direct involume interaction by sensing user input with a Kinect camera placed above the display. However, by exploiting the properties of the optical configuration, we also demonstrate novel prototypes for fully integrated input sensing alongside simultaneous display. We conclude by discussing limitations, implications for interaction, and ideas for future work.

KinectFusion enables a user holding and moving a standard Kinect camera to rapidly create detailed 3D reconstructions of an indoor scene. Only the depth data from Kinect is used to track the 3D pose of the sensor and reconstruct, geometrically precise, 3D models of the physical scene in real-time. The capabilities of KinectFusion, as well as the novel GPU-based pipeline are described in full. Uses of the core system for low-cost handheld scanning, and geometry-aware augmented reality and physics-based interactions are shown. Novel extensions to the core GPU pipeline demonstrate object segmentation and user interaction directly in front of the sensor, without degrading camera tracking or reconstruction. These extensions are used to enable real-time multi-touch interactions anywhere, allowing any planar or non-planar reconstructed physical surface to be appropriated for touch.

The Projected Interfaces architecture enables bi-directional user interaction with smart tangible objects. Smart objects function as both input and output devices simultaneously by cooperating with projector-camera systems to achieve a projected display on their surfaces. Tangible manipulation of the object and camera-based tracking allow interaction directly with the projected display. Such hybrid interfaces benefit both from the flexibility offered by the GUI and the intuitiveness of TUI. In this paper we present the theory behind how to consider interaction for projected interfaces with an architecture design and a proof of concept implementation using an augmented photograph album.