Mobile AR using pre-captured omnidirectional images

In the field of augmented reality (AR), geometric and photometric registration is routinely achieved in real time. However, real-time geometric registration often leads to misalignment (e.g., jitter and drift) due to the error from camera pose estimation. Due to limited resources on mobile devices, it is also difficult to implement state-of-the-art techniques for photometric registration on mobile AR systems. In order to solve these problems, we developed a mobile AR system in a significantly different way from conventional systems. In this system, captured omnidirectional images and virtual objects are registered geometrically and photometrically in an offline rendering process. The appropriate part of the prerendered omnidirectional AR image is shown to a user through a mobile device with online registration between the real world and the pre-captured image. In order to investigate the validity of our new framework for mobile AR, we conducted experiments using the prototype system on a real site in Todai-ji Temple, a famous world cultural heritage site in Japan.