Lab Talk: Dr. Christian Sandor speaking about AR

Recently the Intuity lab talk went to its next round. This time an expert in the field of Augmented Reality gave us insight into his work. Dr. Christian Sandor worked at the Canon’s Leading-Edge Technology Research Headquarters in Tokyo, Japan.

Today Christian is a Senior Lecturer at the University of South Australia, where he directs the Magic Vision Lab. The Magic Vision Lab works in two main fields of Augmented Reality:

1. Mobile Augmented Reality

Today’s mobile devices such as smartphones allow us to search facilities within the users immediate environment. With Augmented Reality the results can be overlayed on a live video image of the real world, which provides an intuitive way of interaction. However this technology brings up a new challenge: How can the device view objects, which are hided by another one? For this case XrayVision and MeltVision enable users to explore occluded points of interest. In plus DistortVision enables users to explore points of interest which are outside their field of view.

2. Visuo-Haptic Augmented Reality

The human perception is multimodal: The senses of touch and vision do not operate in isolation, but rather closely coupled. This observation has inspired systems that allow users to see and touch virtual objects at the same location in space. Visuo-Haptic AR is a system, which allows users to see and touch a virtual object. The user can also feel the object with his hand through a haptic device called Phantom.