Section: New Results

From Acquisition to Display

Spatial Augmented Reality

Spatial augmented reality allows to improve or modify the perception of the reality with virtual information displayed directly in the real world, using video-projection. Many fields such as tourism, entertainment, education, medicine, industry or cultural heritage may benefit from it. Recent computer science techniques allow to measure, analyse and visualise the geometry of the surface of real objects, as for instance archeological artefacts. We have proposed a SAR interaction and visualisation technique (part of the PhD thesis "Interaction techniques, personalized experience and surface reconstruction for spatial augmented reality" [12] defended this year) that combines the advantages of the study of both real and 3D archeological artefacts. Thus, we superimpose on the object an expressive rendering based on curvatures with SAR, allowing for example to show details of engravings. Next, we simulate the use of a flashlight with the help of a 6-degree-of-freedom controller. The user can then specify the area on the object to be augmented and adjust the various necessary parameters of the expressive rendering. One of the main caracteristics of SAR is to enable multiple users to simultaneously participate to the same experience. However, depending on the target application, this can be seen as a drawback.

We have also proposed a new display device [27] that allows to create experiences in SAR that are both multiuser and personalised by taking into account the user point of view. In order to do so, the projection display, set in front of the object to augment, is made from a material that is both retro-reflective and semi-transparent. We suggest two different uses of this new device, as well as two scenarios of application.

Isotropic BRDF Measurements

Image-based BRDF measurements on spherical material samples present a great opportunity to shorten significantly the acquisition time with respect to more traditional, non-multiplexed measurement methods for isotropic BRDFs. However, it has never been analyzed deeply, what measurement accuracy can be achieved in such a setup; what are the main contributing uncertainty factors and how do they relate to calibration procedures. We have developed [20] a new set of isotropic BRDF measurements with their radiometric and geometric uncertainties acquired within such an imaging setup. We have analyzed the most prominent optical phenomena that affect measurement accuracy and pave the way for more thorough uncertainty analysis in forthcoming image-based BRDF measurements. Our newly acquired data with their quantified uncertainties will be helpful for comparing the quality and accuracy of the different experimental setups and for designing other such image-based BRDF measurement devices.