Tangible Mixed Reality On-Site: Interactive Augmented Visualisations from Architectural Working Models in Urban Design

Abstract

Abstract. The consequences of architectural planning and design decisions made in the early design phases are hard to foresee. While professionals are used to reading plans and understanding architectural models, most laypeople are not familiar with their abstractions. This can lead to misinterpretations and misunderstandings between the different participants in the design process, especially in complex building situations, and decisions can be made or rejected that can have far-reaching consequences for the remainder of the project.In this paper we describe the concept and prototypical implementation of a decision-support system for the early design and discussion stages of urban design projects that aims to address precisely this problem. The setup directly connects physical volumetric models and hand-drawn sketches with an interactive, mixedreality visualization presented on a tablet or mobile phone, making it possible to see an interactive real-time view of an architectural design within the context of the actual site. In addition, the system is able to incorporate interactive simulations conducted on the model and presented in the AR-view. Keywords: Early design stages · Urban design · HCI · Tangible interfaces · Immersive environment · Simulations ProblemDuring the early design phases presentations and discussions between architects and clients usually involve sketches, paper and models. While designers are used to working intuitively with these tools, laypeople are not used to reading plans or scale models and find it difficult to relate these abstract representations to the real world. Many people, therefore, find it hard to assess the impact of design decisions at this stage for the later result.An alternative means of presentation is the use of perspective drawings and visualisations that show how an architectural design will look in a real scenario or the actual context. With the availability of affordable and ever more powerful computers, handdrawn perspectives have mostly been replaced by digital visualisations, initially in the form of individual rendered images and more recently in the form of immersive and © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 G.

Augmented and Virtual Reality in Construction: Drivers and Limitations for Industry Adoption

“…power distribution boxes, pipe mains, etc.) in complex sites (Neges and Koch, 2016), (3) Support design reviews (Dong et al, 2013;Schubert et al, 2015). For example, Lin et al (2019) presented an AR system that visualizes the results of computer fluid dynamics simulations of indoor thermal environments on mobile devices.…”

Touching and traveling on 3D augmented tangible maps for learning geography

“…The technological basis of the collaborative design platform (Schubert et al , 2015) is a large-format multi-touch table with real-time 3D object recognition. Collaborative design platform obviates the needs for markers in the physical model, making it possible to flexibly and freely alter the model as desired and to have these changes reflected immediately in the digital reconstruction.…”

A multi-user collaborative BIM-AR system to support design and construction

“…A marker-based AR approach was selected as this allowed rapid development and also opened up the potential for the tool to be utilised across multiple platforms using ubiquitous mobile devices. In addition, as the use of larger touch screen collaborative workspaces such as touch screen tables are becoming more prominent [53] then the ability to operate the BIM-AR tool on this medium is also considered.…”