Complex public buildings like airports use various systems to guide people to a certain destination. Such approaches are usually implemented by showing a floor plan, having guiding signs or color coded lines on the floor. With a technology that supports 6DOF tracking in indoor environments it is possible to guide people individually by using augmented reality guiding visualizations. The proposed research concentrates on three topics which are the main reason, why such a guiding system is still not available in real world situations. At first a tracking solution HyMoTrack is presented, based on a visual hybrid tracking approach for smart phones and tested in a real world airport scenario. The tracking and the guiding part of a reliable indoor navigation requests a 3D model of the environment. For that reason a 3D model generation algorithm was implemented, which automatically creates a 3D mesh out of a vectorized 2D floor plan. Finally the human aspect of an AR guiding system is researched and a novel AR path concept is presented for guiding people with AR devices. This FOVPath is designed to react not only to the position of the user and the target, but is also dependent on the view direction and the field of view (FOV) capabilities of the used device. This ensures that the user always gets reasonable information within the current FOV. To evaluate the concept technical evaluations and user studies were and will be performed.

Especially for young children measuring their physiological parameters to assess their health can be stressful, even when conducted at home by their parents. Therefore we present a concept that can relieve some of the anxiety correlated with an examination and implemented it in a test setup we call "MediCubes" to investigate how this approach is received. In this system cube shaped tangible objects are fitted with noninvasive sensors measuring pulse, temperature, blood oxygen saturation and lung capacity while interacting with them. Incorporation in a storytelling game allows guiding a child through a series of unperceived physiological measurements as an enjoyable experience. The acquired data is stored on a tablet computer and can be reviewed by parents or doctors. In this paper the design process and the developed hard- and software are presented. Furthermore we report on a usability study with 8 children and 12 adults indicating high acceptance and enjoyment of the system. These results as well as our "lessons learned" could have implications on the future development of home health monitoring toys.

Precise localization for mobile Augmented Reality in large indoor environments without specific tracking infrastructure is challenging. This is especially true for rooms with changing properties, like lighting, seating and carpeting. With these constraints a map for a vision based tracking approach has to be continuously updated. The Parallel Tracking and Mapping (PTAM) algorithm is capable of generating and extending a map while tracking the camera pose in an unknown environment. However, it has originally been designed for small workspace environments and has therefore certain limitations. We have extended and modified the original implementation in order to ensure efficient and robust map generation and tracking in large rooms. Furthermore, we have tested a mobile setup with the system in Festsaal in Vienna's Hofburg, which is close to thousand square meters in size. The user's position and path was tracked while the environment was augmented with virtual objects and the system was successfully tested for robustness and occlusions.

Fire fighting remains a dangerous profession despite many recent technological and organizational measures. Sensors and technical systems can augment the performance of fire fighters and increase safety and efficiency during operation. An important aspect in that context is the awareness of location, structure and thermal properties of the environment. This work focuses on the design and development of a mobile system, which can reconstruct a 3d model of a building's interior structure in real-time and fuses the visualization with the image of a thermal camera. In addition, the position and viewing direction of the fire fighter within the model is determined and a thermal map can be generated from the gathered data. This helps an operational commander to provide accurate instructions to his men during a mission. First tests with our system in different situations showed good results, being able to reconstruct different larger scenes and create thermal maps thereof.