Embedded System Architecture for Mobile Augmented Reality - Sailor Assistance Case Study

With upcoming see-through displays new kinds of applications of Augmented Reality are emerging. However this also raises questions about the design of associated embedded systems that must be lightweight and handle object positioning, heterogeneous sensors, wireless communications as well as graphic computation. This paper studies the specific case of a promising Mobile AR processor, which is different from usual graphics applications. A complete architecture is described, designed and prototyped on FPGA. It includes hardware/software partitioning based on the analysis of application requirements. The specification of an original and flexible coprocessor is detailed. Choices as well as optimizations of algorithms are also described. Implementation results and performance evaluation show the relevancy of the proposed approach and demonstrate a new kind of architecture focused on object processing and optimized for the AR domain.