ISEGI-NOVA AR Project - Augmented Reality Aplied to the Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Project work presented as a partial requirement to obtain a Master Degree in Information Management

In recent years, information technologies have progressed at an accelerated pace. The need to combine the availability of the information with portability has been fostering the evolution of technological devices, while producing some paradigm shifts. Nowadays, mobile computing, in particular, is an area increasingly put to use and recognised as necessary in terms of adding value to an information society. On that subject, the role of the more advanced generation of mobile phones, also called smartphones, has grown in terms of empowerment and importance. Evolving technologically day by day, smartphones can be presented as a communication tool that combines access to a key set of information and location services with pocket-like portability.At the same time, Augmented Reality – or the act of superimposing virtual elements to the image captured in real time – has been taking advantage of the rapid evolution in terms of the smartphones’ processing capabilities. The result has translated into the development of several technologies which make full use of wireless networks, of the capabilities for detecting positioning, and of the motion sensors. The current state of maturity of these technologies allows us to take Augmented Reality into account, not only as an innovative communication form for the mobile context, but also as a sophisticated method for exhibiting information while relating the presented object, through geo-referencing, with the real world.The goal of the ISEGI-NOVA AR Project consists in developing and deploying an Augmented Reality system that will assure a multitude of services, directed to the smartphone medium. These services will allow users to interact with multimedia layers (images, sounds, video, text, animations) superimposed, through geo-referencing, to the image captured by the smartphone camera. Besides the ability to provide Augmented Reality contents, another project goal is to develop a web platform that allows dynamic Augmented Reality content creation, through graphical user interfaces. The report includes a technology selection phase, architecture overviews, and the description of all of the developed software components. The outcome of the ISEGI-NOVA AR Project will deliver new tools to the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, to be used for information publishing and will represent, ultimately, a new era in terms of the relationship between the university and the community.