Week 3 Summary-ARGON
The Argon AR Web Browser and Standards-based AR Application Environment
This paper describes the ARGON AR Web browser, the first AR browser for iOS that supports most existing web technologies and standards. The dream of AR is to create an immersive environment in which virtual content is superimposed over the worlds view. Dr. Blair and his team attempted to realize this dream of AR through their ARGON browser. The paper not only describes the ARGON architecture and applications but also gives a background of the existing AR applications and explains why they made certain design decisions.
The need of an AR application environment is the same as that of windows system. Users should be able to decide which programs to run and how to interact with them. Additionally, AR content authoring should be abstract enough so that authors have sufficient control over the look, feel and interaction of their content without being tied to a particular hardware or platform. Mobile devices with GPS and orientation sensors and the mobile web with a large set of features provide an ideal foundation for an AR application environment. WebKit3D extensions in Mobile Safari allow interactive 2D content to be rendered efficiently in 3D making iOS mobile devices suitable for AR applications. Considering all this, ARGON was developed as an AR application environment for iOS devices leveraging existing mobile technology as much as possible.
The key features about ARGON are that its architecture allows developers to create AR applications using existing web technologies and standards. It layers multiple channels over each other so that users can interact with them simultaneously. The channel authors can design the content and interactivity of their channels independently; ARGON takes care of the security and robustness concerns. It uses KARML which is an extension of KML. Since KML is the spatial markup language for Google Earth and Map and also an import and export format for several GIS it is suitable for AR. The feature that appealed to me the most is how intelligently the authors deal with the inaccuracy of GPS sensors in mobile using GeoSpots. They enable users to replace the video at GeoSpot locations with a panoramic image that changes with the device orientation thereby eliminating errors in orientation accuracy.
This paper really improved my understanding of how ARGON internally functions and I am very excited to develop some useful application on ARGON. But one question that I have in mind is that can mobile devices create a fully immersive experience given the limited perceptual capabilities due to the small device size.
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