ARWand for an augmuented world builder

ARWand is a smartphone-based 3D user interface for manipulating 3D virtual objects in a wearable augmented reality (AR) environment without the use of a cumbersome external tracking system. In this paper, we apply ARWand to an augmented world builder that enables users to model the real world and add virtual content to it. First, the user, wearing a video, see-through, head-mounted display (HMD), selects an object of interest (OoI) in a physical space using ARWand and assigns a local reference coordinate to the OoI. This enables the program to construct a corresponding mirror space on the fly. Then, through control menus, ARWand lets the user load, select, and manipulate (3-DoF translate, 3-DoF rotate, scale, and texture) 3D virtual objects at various distances while the user moves within a wearable AR environment. We believe our proposed augmented world builder system using ARWand can help users easily construct augmented worlds anywhere and thus experience a more interesting and better informed reality. The proposed augmented world builder can be applied to various spaces such as galleries, museums, tour sites, or industrial locations and can create richly augmented reality ecosystems.