voxar labs :: Research

The VOXAR Labs performs research, development & innovation projects on three major areas, which are visualization, tracking and natural interaction, all converging to one great technology field that is augmented reality. These are carried out in collaboration with academic and research institutions, government agencies and industry partners, in Brazil and overseas.

Visualization Solutions for the Energy Sector

The Point Based Animation project aims to build a tool for aiding the hydrodynamics design of submerged ships advancing and maneuvering. Therefore, it is supported by analytical-numerical and experimental methods configured and validated in the context of case studies to be defined in collaboration with the Brazilian Navy. The RANS method will be applied regarding the analytical-numerical research topic, and as experimental method it will be used meshless particle methods. NAVEGANTE is executed in collaboration with CTMSP, USP and DEMEC UFPE. Funding is done by FINEP.

Order food from an interactive menu augmented with ingredients information and delivery options when users point their cellphones to it. Consumers scan menu items to view more information and can quickly request delivery or find physical locations to visit. This concept enhances ordinary delivery menus with additional details regarding prices, ingredients or even nutritional values, maximizing delivery and sales by reaching customers on the go. This is the Food2You concept that earned third place in the Layar Creation Challenge 2011.

The “Markerless tracking solutions for augmented reality on the web” project aims developing tracking software infrastructure for creation of web targeted AR applications based on natural features of the real scene. A texture based markerless tracking technique for planar objects was used. One server-side tracking infrastructure was implemented using the Mammoth open source Flash media server and two client-side tracking solutions were developed, each one based on a different browser plug-in (OSAKit and Silverlight). In addition, a browser native implementation is ongoing.

Markerless tracking solutions for augmented reality on the web

Our tracking technology is part of a system that integrates the application of 3D reconstruction from images techniques to generate a 3D model of the scene with tracking techniques to successfully track the generated model and augment the environment with virtual information. This system is able to perform 3D tracking through geometry acquisition and calibration capabilities. Despite being an ongoing work, it was successfully tested with a texture based tracking technique during the tracking competition session at ISMAR 2012.

The augmented reality team of the project "Research and development of a virtual and augmented reality based environment for simulation of procedures in electrical substations" aims researching and developing techniques that allow the creation of an augmented reality based application able to hasten and simplify the design of engineer's activities in the planning of electrical substations. This project is executed in collaboration with Eletrobras Furnas and LACTEC, being ANEEL the funding agency.

Augmented Reality Solutions for the Energy Sector

The iKapp project aims research and development of an environment based on interactive technologies for rehabilitation and accessibility purposes. iKapp aims to make rehabilitation process more reliable and agreeable using natural interaction, movement orientation and physiotherapy support. iKapp is a research project executed in collaboration with the Physiotherapy Department of the Federal University of Pernambuco, and partially funded by FACEPE. It earned the SVR 2012 best paper award and the SBGames 2012 third best paper award. iKapp's reAIRbilitation game earned the first place of the Games For Change Award and the best game award in the Other Platforms Category of the 11th Indie Games Festival 2012 of the SBGames 2012. A Patent has been applied under the no PI1103091-7, with deposit date June 27th, 2011.

Guitars on Air is a music game that follows the idea of consolidated Rock Band and Guitar Hero like games. Its gameplay takes place through natural interaction, provided by the usersí gesture recognition. Using Augmented Reality, a virtual guitar is played according to a sequence of commands displayed, so that the user experience is closer to the reality of a musician. The game control is done by the user's body, that is tracked using the HAFT (hand and face tracker). This is a research project partially funded by CNPq and FACEPE.

ARBlocks is a dynamic blocks platform aiming early childhood educational activities. The platform and its applications were designed to increase the teaching possibilities for educators as well as motivate children and help them to develop important abilities. This tool is based on projective augmented reality and tangible user interfaces. The content is displayed by projectors, which exhibit the required information only on the blocks surface using an automatic projector calibration technique, allowing teachers and children to easily use the tool. ARBlocks is a research project executed in collaboration with the Education Center of the Federal University of Pernambuco, and partially funded by FACEPE.

ARBlocks: Augmenting Education

Multi-touch tables are visualization devices that allow users to interact and directly manipulate with their hands or a pen like device the digital content exhibited on the surface. This way, applications that require drawings or visualizing 2D information or 3D objects dynamically and from different points of view may benefit from this technology. As a proof of concept, a low cost multi-touch table has been constructed that supports interaction with infra-red pens and Flash and C++ based applications. A related project aims developing an application supporting the design of electrical substations, using Microsoftís PixelSense technology and the Samsung SUR40 table. The execution is in collaboration with Eletrobras Furnas and LACTEC, being funded by the ANEEL.

Multi-touch Table

The RT²AR is a novel graphics rendering pipeline applied to augmented reality, based on a real time ray tracing paradigm. By associating our highly optimized ray tracer, called RT², with an augmented reality framework, the pipeline is capable to provide high quality rendering with real time interaction between virtual and real objects, such as occlusions, soft shadows, custom shaders, reflections and self-reflections. The ARToolKitPlus library and the Microsoft Kinect are integrated in the pipeline, presenting occlusion and recursive reflection effects between virtual and real objects without the latter ones needing to be previously modeled when using Kinect. This is a research project partially funded by CNPq.

RT²AR

The RT² project researches major concepts related to 3D visualization of massive models. Such models are defined by complex geometric shapes in quantitative terms, commonly from 106 to 109 primitive units like points/particles and triangles. VOXAR Labs is investigating advanced technologies for real time visualization of 3D environments and intends to render massive models using ray tracing on massively parallel computing platforms such as GPUs. RT² is a research project partially funded by CNPq.

Real Time Ray Tracer