Shared database of annotation information for wearable augmented reality system

This paper describes a database of annotation information for augmented reality (AR) on wearable computers. With the advance of computers, AR systems using wearable computers have received a great deal of attention as a new method for displaying location-based information in real-time. To overlay annotations on the real scene image, a user's computer needs to hold annotation information. Up to this time, since a database of annotation information is usually held in advance in the wearable computer, it is difficult for the database of annotation information to be effectively updated or added by providers of information. The purpose of this paper is to construct a networked database system of annotation information for wearable AR systems. The proposed system provides users with annotation information from a server via a wireless network so that the wearable computers do not need to hold it in advance and information providers can easily update and add the database with a web browser. In this study, we have developed a shared database of annotation information and have proven the feasibility of the prototype system with preliminary experiments. In experiments, the orientation and the position of user's viewpoint are measured by integrating several kinds of sensors. The user's position-based annotations have been proven to be shown to the user automatically. Moreover, we have confirmed that the database can be successfully updated and added by information providers with a web browser.