APPLICATIONS OF INTERACTIVE VIRTUAL HUMANS IN MOBILE AUGMENTED REALITY

Definition: Virtual humans are used as interfaces as well as real-time augmentations (three-dimensional computer-generated superimpositions) in real environments, as experienced by users though specialized equipment for enhanced mobility (e.g. ultra mobile PCs and video see-through glasses) Recent advances in hardware and software for mobile computing have enabled a new breed of mobile Augmented Reality systems and applications featuring interactive virtual characters. This has resulted from the convergence of the tremendous progress in mobile computer graphics and mobile AR interfaces. In this paper, we focus on the evolution of our algorithms and their integration towards improving the presence and interactivity of virtual characters in real and virtual environments, as we realize the transition from mobile workstations to ultra-mobile PC's. We examine in detail three crucial parts of such systems: user-tracked interaction; real-time, automatic, adaptable animation of virtual characters and deformable pre-computed radiance transfer illumination for virtual characters. We examine our efforts to enhance the sense of presence for the user, while maintaining the quality of animation and interactivity as we scale and deploy our AR framework in a variety of platforms. We examine different AR virtual human enhanced scenarios under the different mobile devices that illustrate the interplay and applications of our methods