BouldAR: using augmented reality to support collaborative boulder training

Nowadays smartphones are ubiquitous and - to some extent - already used to support sports training, e.g. runners or bikers track their trip with a gps-enabled smartphone. But recent mobile technology has powerful processors that allow even more complex tasks like image or graphics processing. In this work we address the question on how mobile technology can be used for collaborative boulder training. More specifically, we present a mobile augmented reality application to support various parts of boulder training. The proposed approach also incorporates sharing and other social features. Thus our solution supports collaborative training by providing an intuitive way to create, share and define goals and challenges together with friends. Furthermore we propose a novel method of trackable generation for augmented reality. Synthetically generated images of climbing walls are used as trackables for real, existing walls.