Tracing People’s Experiences with Registrated Spatio-Temporal Photographs in AR Spaces

Abstract

We propose a new style smartphone application that presents past photographs in AR (Augmented Reality) at the location in the real world where they were taken. The application consists of a process that provides precise location information of the photograph and a process that changes the present of the photograph depending on the user's movements. The goal of our research is to support the sharing of place-related stories with photographs. First, spatial awareness using a smartphone camera enables a high accurate location information of centimeter-order for user to obtain more real experience. AR is effective to assists in registering the photograph on a third-dimensional space. Second, the AR image is animated depending on the smartphone camera's position and direction so that the user can easily and naturally be guided to the location where the photograph was taken. The new framework for easily registering photographs to the AR space using a smartphone realize a new innovative form of real world visual representation of photographs by adding physical actions. Additionally, the networked service will be introduced to the framework so that users could share rich experiences, for example, recording personal or historical stories and providing interesting content for tourist spots.