A UWB-Driven Self-Actuated Projector Platform for Interactive Augmented Reality Applications

With the rapid development of interactive technology, creating systems that allow users to define their interactive envelope freely and provide multi-interactive modalities is important to build up an intuitive interactive space. We present an indoor interactive system where a human can customize and interact through a projected screen utilizing the surrounding surfaces. An ultra-wideband (UWB) wireless sensor network was used to assist human-centered interaction design and navigate the self-actuated projector platform. We developed a UWB-based calibration algorithm to facilitate the interaction with the customized projected screens, where a hand-held input device was designed to perform mid-air interactive functions. Sixteen participants were recruited to evaluate the system performance. A prototype level implementation was tested inside a simulated museum environment, where a self-actuated projector provides interactive explanatory content for the on-display artifacts under the user’s command. Our results depict the applicability to designate the interactive screen efficiently indoors and interact with the augmented content with reasonable accuracy and relatively low workload. Our findings also provide valuable user experience information regarding the design of mobile and projection-based augmented reality systems, with the ability to overcome the limitations of other conventional techniques.