AN INNOVATIVE APPROACH TO TEACHING MECHANISM USING AUGMENTED REALITY TECHNOLOGIES

This paper presents a markerless AR book for teaching in enjoyable way mechanisms in mechanical engineering courses. The main idea is to provide to the student real time information on mechanism structure and kinematics by mixing images from the real world with 3D virtual objects. Although the user may watch a physical experiment by means of a webcam, on the computer screen he will see real book pages and, superimposed, the relevant graphical annotations and 3D mechanism simulation. The software, hardware and the methodology, as well as the results are described in detail. Using this teaching concept, a variety of computational mechanism models can be studied, which reduces the need for classical experiments that involve expensive installations. The advantage of this system method is the usage of inexpensive equipment for intuitive learning the simulation of