[Summary Week 3] The Argon AR Web Browser and Standards-based AR Application Environment
The paper by Blair McIntyre et al. describes the implementation of their eponymous augmented reality web-browser, Argon and also details the KARML specification. Drawing clever parallels from the evolution of the 2D GUI ubiquitous today, the authors motivate the need for the development of a framework to facilitate the delivery of AR content by developers. They point out that such a framework will make AR accessible to the masses by fueling a boom in AR application development.
The authors cite the recent maturing of the mobile platform and the ever increasing relevance of the web (also tipping their hats to cloud computing in the process) as the reason for their decision to invest in the creation of a mobile based AR content delivery framework that is tightly integrated across the entire spectrum of prevalent web-technologies.
Describing Argon, the authors draw attention to its key feature – its multi-channel architecture. Achieved by the usage of layered WebKit instances, this architecture allows for effective sand-boxing of the channels of the content, while also allowing for their seamless presentation. Additionally, Argon also provides for client side scripting APIs that amongst other things, also allow for manipulating the KML DOM.
Another significant contribution of the authors’ is the specification of KARML, an extension to the Keyhole Markup Language employed in Google Maps. KARML provides for richer positioning tags for AR content. Another addition of KARML, GeoSpots, allows users to override the results of GPS tracking and align themselves with pre-surveyed locations, thus increasing registration accuracy. GeoSpots, combined with real-time panoramic image substitution for real-word video, also opens up the tantalizing possibility of using the framework for creating virtual-tours.
The authors conclude by describing some applications that were developed using their framework, highlighting the ease and rapidity of their development and commending their ingenuity, thereby demonstrating the viability of the web as a mobile AR platform.
Comments are closed.