HANDHELD AUGMENTED REALITY IN CIVIL ENGINEERING

This paper presents an overview of a project focusing on research on the next-generation field information system for utility companies, providing mobile workforces with capabilities for on-site inspection and planning. For achieving this aim, handheld Augmented Reality technology is used for on-site visualization of geometric and semantic attributes of geospatial 3D models on the user’s handheld device. The project aims at providing a fully functional handheld Augmented Reality device for utility field workers. A software solution that can visualize registered three-dimensional underground models in real time has been developed. Registration in 3D requires being able to perform accurate global localization and posing tracking in real time without relying on unrealistic assumptions concerning prior scene knowledge. The generation of such three-dimensional underground models will be discussed as well as an overview of the fields of application will be given.