Heads up and camera down: a vision-based tracking modality for mobile mixed reality

Anywhere Augmentation pursues the goal of lowering the initial investment of time and money necessary to participate in mixed reality work, bridging the gap between researchers in the field and regular computer users. Our paper contributes to this goal by introducing the GroundCam, a cheap tracking modality with no significant setup necessary. By itself, the GroundCam provides high frequency, high resolution relative position information similar to an inertial navigation system, but with significantly less drift. We present the design and implementation of the GroundCam, analyze the impact of several design and run-time factors on tracking accuracy, and consider the implications of extending our GroundCam to different hardware configurations. Motivated by the performance analysis, we developed a hybrid tracker that couples the GroundCam with a wide area tracking modality via a complementary Kalman filter, resulting in a powerful base for indoor and outdoor mobile mixed reality work. To conclude, the performance of the hybrid tracker and its utility within mixed reality applications is discussed.