Book Image

Augmented Reality for Android Application Development

Book Image

Augmented Reality for Android Application Development

Overview of this book

Augmented Reality offers the magical effect of blending the physical world with the virtual world, which brings applications from your screen into your hands. AR redefines advertising and gaming, as well as education. It will soon become a technology that will have to be mastered as a necessity by mobile application developers. Augmented Reality for Android Application Development enables you to implement sensor-based and computer vision-based AR applications on Android devices. You will learn about the theoretical foundations and practical details of implemented AR applications, and you will be provided with hands-on examples that will enable you to quickly develop and deploy novel AR applications on your own. Augmented Reality for Android Application Development will help you learn the basics of developing mobile AR browsers, how to integrate and animate 3D objects easily with the JMonkeyEngine, how to unleash the power of computer vision-based AR using the Vuforia AR SDK, and will teach you about popular interaction metaphors. You will get comprehensive knowledge of how to implement a wide variety of AR apps using hands-on examples. This book will make you aware of how to use the AR engine, Android layout, and overlays, and how to use ARToolkit. Finally, you will be able to apply this knowledge to make a stunning AR application.
Table of Contents (14 chapters)
Augmented Reality for Android Application Development
Credits
About the Authors
About the Reviewers
www.PacktPub.com
Preface
Free Chapter
1
Augmented Reality Concepts and Tools
Index

Knowing where you look – handling inertial sensors


With the previous example and access to GPS location, we can now update a user's location and be able to do a basic tracking in Augmented Reality. However, this tracking is only considering position of the user and not his or her orientation. If, for example, the user rotates the phone, nothing will happen, with changes being effective only if he is moving. For that we need to be able to detect changes in rotation for the user; this is where inertial sensors come in. The inertial sensors can be used to detect changes in orientation.

Understanding sensors

In the current generation of mobile phones, three types of sensors are available and useful for orientation:

  • Accelerometers: These sensors detect the proper acceleration of your phone, also called g-force acceleration. Your phone is generally equipped with multi-axis model to deliver you acceleration in the 3 axes: pitch, roll, and tilt of your phone. They were the first sensors made available...