TECHNICAL REPORT
SPRING 2011
Instructor:
Dr.Kwok-Bun Yue
Mentor:
Mr.Dilhar De Silva
Project Team Members:
Nithin Kumar Dudde
Manoj Gidda
Shivani Kovvuri
Srikanth Inapurapu
Srikanth Majji (Team Leader)
Report Date:
29 April 2011
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We take an immense pleasure in expressing our sincere thanks to our instructor, Dr. Kwok Bun Yue, for providing us with valuable feedback throughout the capstone project. We really appreciate his advice, support, and feedback.
We are very much grateful to our mentor, Mr. Dilhar De Silva, for his inspiring guidance and advice throughout our project. Mr. Dilhar De Silva has been the inspiration and was always up front to motivate and encourage us for bringing out our project successfully. We would like to thank him for his excellent technical expertise, guidance, support, and time.
Finally we extend our thanks to each of our families, who gave us encouragement whenever we had a tough time.
ABSTRACT
In today’s world, mobile applications are triggering a fundamental shift in the way people experience computing and use mobile. The explosive growth in smartphones in the last three years facilitated the development of hundreds of thousands of mobile applications that promised to fundamentally change how people use the Web. Our mentor, Mr. Dilhar De Silva, CEO of AtLinks Communications, was interested in developing an android mobile prototype application using augmented reality technology.
The overall goal of the project is to develop an Android-based augmented reality (AR) mobile application through which images and text can be placed on top of the objects of the phone camera view based on the geo-location of the objects detected by the phone. For example, using this application, administrative user can place the schedule of the event at a particular geo-code (latitude and longitude) on a server by using a web application and the mobile users can open the mobile application on android phone to view the augmented image of schedule overlying on camera’s view. Mobile user can also download the schedule into their mobile phones by providing their login credentials.
To provide the necessary AR functionality, our team developed and used a metric to study about AR API’s and selected QUALCOMM API for pattern based augmentation, and WIKITUDE API for geo-code based augmentation.
This project was carried out in accordance with Rational Unified Process (RUP), using Scrum process. The process went iteratively and incrementally delivering sprints and finally delivering the end product. The project will be documented using UML 2.0.
CONTENTS
ABSTRACT 3
1.1 Purpose 5
1.2 Overview 5
1.SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT MODEL 8
2.DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION 10
3.1 Architecture diagram: 10
4.TECHNICAL DETAILS 11
5.TECHNICAL CHALLENGES AND LESSONS LEARNT 12
5.1Selection of Android Mobile phone 12
5.2Selection of Augmented Reality Browser/Engine 13
6.CONCLUSION 13
7.FUTURE WORK 14
8.REFERENCES 14
9.APPENDICES 15
Appendix A: Project Management and Team Information 15
Appendix B: Major Tasks and Contributions 16
Appendix C: Software Requirements Specification 17
Appendix D: Database Design Schema 20
Appendix E: Use case and Sequence Diagrams 23
Appendix F: Screenshots of Client Side and Server Side 33
1.1 Purpose
The goal of our capstone project is to develop an Android-based augmented reality (AR) mobile application through which images and text can be placed on top of the objects of the phone camera view based on the geo-location of the objects detected by the phone. It will also develop a server-side web application where users can place graphical image at a specific geocode (location) using Google Maps.
1.2 Overview
In today’s business and educational world, every industry and educational institutions wants to share any specific information at lightning speed. This may be a part of manufacturing industries promoting their new product, or shopping malls and restaurants promoting their new discount offers, or educational institutions announcing on-campus job vacancies and any special events etc. In the existing system, manufacturing industries does these promotions by displaying the new product details on big hoardings or by advertising it on Television. Shopping malls and restaurants promote their discount offers and by adding pamphlets in the daily news paper. Students of university have an only option of reaching the special event place to obtain the schedule of it.
However the existing system of sharing the specific information to people has several drawbacks
Cost factor in case of advertising on TV and displaying large hoardings.
Pamphlets outmoded - Majority of the news paper readers are more interested on reading news rather than the pamphlets added in it.
Students would not know the schedule of an event unless they reach the place and also printing schedule brochures would add an extra budget to the event.
In today’s world of technology, internet is one of the most important technological breakthroughs of the 20th century along with the mobile computing. “According to the results of a recent online survey conducted by IBM, television sets are losing ground to the internet when it comes to personal leisure time”[6]. These kinds of promotions and advertising based on the existing systems mentioned above are reaching to very less people.
As the growth of internet and mobile users are growing day by day, all the mobile carrier services are offering smart phones to them at low prices possible with a contract based. Our mentor Mr. Dilhar De Silva wants us to build a mobile application on android using augmented reality technology to overcome the above drawbacks by targeting all the android mobile users as an initiative step.
SMAART, an android-based augmented reality technology application makes android mobile phone users life easier in finding the information they looking for. Rather going to the places in person, an android mobile phone owner can download an augmented reality application/software that uses the phone's camera and GPS capabilities to gather information about the surrounding area. For example, if the user selects restaurants from the categories available, it shows information (order menu and discount offers) about restaurants in the area, overlaying this information on the phone's screen. You can even point the phone at a building, and it will tell you if any companies in that building are hiring by displaying a text image on your mobile phone. Aiming the camera towards the educational institution would fetch the mobile user with an event schedule overlying on the phone’s screen.
The server side web application shall have a web based interface which uses Google Maps API to aid administrative users to place the images at specific geo-code locations. Using sensor services such as GPS, the mobile application shall get the current geo-code (latitude and Longitude).The current geo-code (latitude and Longitude) of the device along with user selection of categories and the radius (distance user wants to find places within) is sent to server to figure out if any images have been placed in the virtual world. The images that are augmented are displayed through the camera of the device. The mobile users then should be able to download and store the image augmented onto the device.
SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT MODEL
We used Rational Unified Process (RUP) as the software development model. It provides a disciplined approach to assign tasks and responsibilities within a development organization. The goal of RUP is to ensure the production of high-quality software that meets the needs of its end-users, within a predictable schedule and budget.
Fig 1: RUP phases
RUP has a project lifecycle that consists four phases.
Inception: In the inception phase, the team met with Mr. Dilhar De Silva and gathered all the requirements. One of the requirements of our project is researching on different AR browsers and selecting the best open source browser that suites our project. We have selected Qualcomm API for pattern recognition and Wikitude API for geo-location. The team developed a basic use case diagram depending upon the requirements. Our team also made research on different kinds of android mobile phones and chose the Dell Streak for our project. We have also learnt about the Android SDK by dividing it into sections and later explained it each other. The team worked for almost three weeks in the inception phase.
Elaboration: In the elaboration phase, we have revised the basic use case diagram. The team developed sequence diagrams as well. The team also designed a high level architecture diagram showing the flow of communication between the client and server. The team worked for four weeks in the elaboration phase.
Construction: The construction phase was almost seven weeks. The team learnt new technologies like Android SDK, Qualcomm API, and Wikitude API. We have divided the team into two groups. One group working on server side and other group working on the client side. As we have divided the work, we were able to work independently and complete the project on time.
Transition: During the transition phase, the team performed some tests to verify the project requirements. The prototype was demonstrated to Mr. Dilhar De Silva to validate that the project met the end users’ expectations. The team worked for two weeks on transition phase.
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