AMIRE - authoring mixed reality

This paper describes the requirements of a training demonstrator based on mixed reality in the context of the AMIRE project. The overall objective and idea of the AMIRE project is to define and implement a software system that allows content experts to easily design and implement mixed reality applications without detailed knowledge about the underlying base technologies of MR. Therefore, it describes a generic framework that allows an easy communication between the objects (MR components) used in the AMIRE applications. The AMIRE framework uses a component oriented technology and consists of a the minimal set of components required for a demonstrator, a reusable GEM collection and a visual authoring tool for building MR applications. For the realization of the AMIRE framework we also require an object tracking system that is cheap and easy to use. These are features of the ARToolkit library. Most of the current MR applications focus on the development of AR base technologies, like a lot of projects in the area of research and development of AR and MR applications. Many European projects mainly focus on the development of MR applications for a special domain (e.g. technical maintenance), such as ARVIKA, STAR, etc. But none of these projects focused on a structured authoring approach with reusable components and Gems. Due to the complexity of MR/AR applications only MR experts are able to develop MR/AR applications and prototyping of MR based applications becomes a very difficult task, because most research institutes have to develop (these applications from scratch.