Augmented Reality Campus Navigation and Information Layer
A phone application that overlays directions and building information on the live camera view, anchored accurately enough to be trusted. The tracking drift over distance is the real problem and pretending otherwise produces arrows pointing through walls.
Intermediate
A small team, or one strong student willing to learn something new.1 semester, 2 to 3 students
5 to ship
3 optional extrasSuggested stack
What you should ship
- Anchored points of interest surviving device movement, occlusion and being lowered and raised
- Outdoor navigation combining satellite positioning with visual tracking, with drift measured over a route
- Information overlay for buildings and rooms, editable through an administrative interface
- Accessibility mode showing step-free routes
- Field evaluation with at least 10 participants completing real navigation tasks, with success and time recorded
If you have time left
- Indoor tracking using visual markers where satellite positioning fails
- Persistent shared anchors so several users see content in the same real position
- Live occupancy for shared spaces such as study rooms
The problem
New students spend weeks unable to find rooms, and a two dimensional map does not answer the question of which of these two doors is the one. Augmented reality answers it directly if the anchoring is accurate enough to trust.
What you build
Anchored content, outdoor navigation with fused positioning, an editable information layer, and a real field evaluation.
The problem that will consume your project
Drift. Visual tracking accumulates error as the user walks, and after a hundred metres your carefully placed arrow points into a hedge. Correcting with satellite positioning helps outdoors and introduces its own jumpiness. Measuring drift over a route and reducing it is the core engineering work, and any project that does not address it directly is a demonstration that works for thirty seconds.
The realistic evaluation
Ten people, real routes, measured task success and time, compared against using an existing map application. Be prepared for the honest finding that the map is faster in some cases; explaining when augmented reality wins and when it does not is a better result than claiming it always does.
Design constraints people ignore
Holding a phone up while walking is tiring, unsafe near traffic and looks odd. Design for short glances rather than continuous viewing, and keep a conventional map view available.
Scope warning
Outdoor navigation on one campus area, plus one building's interior at most.
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