The major drawback of both Tinmith and ARQuake and number of solutions like it is that they require a lot of heavy, expensive kit to be worn by the user - something which Thomas and the WCL team have been quick to recognise. “One of the biggest barriers is the HMDs. They don’t look good. People are image conscious, even at the workplace, and they don’t want to wear one of these. I can see them in situations where you need protective eyewear anyway but otherwise, not really. It doesn’t matter how functional the HMD is. It’s not going to overcome this problem. “If you make the technology invisible, then people are more likely to use it. Just look at mobile phones. They used to be bricks before someone made them small enough to catch on.” With this in mind, the WCL has spent the last few years tackling AR user interfaces in a different way. If backpacks and HMDs are the problem, the solution has been to lose both entirely by creating AR that anyone can see in a controlled, indoor environment where the computer can sit on a desk and the virtual overlays can all be done with projectors. Spatial Augmented Reality, as Thomas and his team have called it, uses the projectors to add computer generated images to the real world to make an immersive environment which more than one person can appreciate at the same time. What’s more, tools used to interact with it no longer have to be confined to the traditional standards. The demo video shows an air brush tool which, thanks to the tracking technology perfected in the years of previous projects, knows exactly where it is in the environment and which direction its facing with six degrees of freedom sensor on board. It can then be used to spray virtual graphics onto a real object just as if it were actual paint.
