Dynamic Occlusion of Virtual Objects in an 'Augmented Reality' Environment

This thesis explores a way of increasing the perception of reality within an ''Augmented Reality'' application by making real objects able to obstruct the view of virtual objects. This mimics how real opaque objects occlude each other and thus making virtual objects behave the same way will improve the user experience of Augmented Reality users. The solution uses Unity as the engine with plugins for ARKit and OpenCV. ARKit provides the Augmented Reality experience and can detect real world flat surfaces on which virtual objects can be placed. OpenCV is used for image processing to detect real world objects which can then be translated into virtual silhouettes within Unity that can interact with, and occlude, the virtual objects. The end result is a system that can handle the occlusion in real time, while allowing both the real and virtual objects to translate and rotate within the scene while still maintaining the occlusion. The big drawback of the solution is that it requires a well defined environment without visual clutter and with even lighting to work as intended. This makes it unsuitable for outdoor usage