Augmented Reality

The Interactive Spaces sub-group undertakes research in Augmented Reality methods, technologies and applications that integrate physical and digital environments and materials.

Augmented Reality (AR) is a quite new research area and focuses on coupling digital information with physical objects, places (indoor and outdoor), and spaces. AR aims at bringing IT-capabilities out of the traditional computer and embodying them in the physical environment that people work and live in. Typical applications are to link and display digital annotations on top of objects and places by means of some identifying code (bar-codes, RFIDs, etc.).

The Interactive Spaces group is an interdisciplinary group with mainly computer scientists and architects that started in 1998 as a joint teaching effort called "Interactive Spaces" ("Interaktive Rum" in Danish). Here a collaboration was established, where architects and industrial designers contributed with concepts and physical designs and the computer scientists contributed with IT Concepts, software and infrastructures to the development AR applications and interior for different application domains.

A central effort has been the EU funded WorkSPACE project, which has among other things developed prototypes of new AR based interactive work environments for architects and industrial designer professionals.

The most recent research effort is the establishment of Center for Interactive Spaces, which is researching in interactive environments for a number of non-working domains, including schools, libraries, and private homes.