Fast vision-based scene modeling for augmented reality in unprepared man-made environments

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a general purpose Augmented Reality (AR) system that allows to add easily 3D computer generated (CG) objects into real man-made environments. Our system goes to a very intuitive and easy in situ 3D structure recovery of planar piecewise scenes without using powerful hardware nor commodity sensors. The user simply has to move the camera (translation of the focus is mandatory) and take two different pictures of the scene and our approach obtains a rough planar piecewise representation of the environment suitable to conduct multi-planar tracking for visual model-based augmented reality and to augment it with virtual objects coherently. Polyhedral representations of scenes are very convenient for manmade environments indoor (e.g., offices, rooms, classrooms) and outdoor (e.g., looking at facades, floor), hence we focus the potential applications of our system to augment simple rooms or urban scenes with virtual imagery.