MixedWalk: Explore Ahead Before Stepping in Mobile Augmented Reality Services

The combination of augmented reality (AR) and location-based services provides mobile users with an intuitive and easy way to access the real-world aware information via their mobile devices, as connecting the physical and cyber world. However, mobile AR interactions limit target objects that are located within a specific distance of the current location of users. In this paper, we propose a new service model, called MixedWalk, for aligning point-of-interest (POI) information with the users' virtual movement in the mobile AR environment. It allows the mobile user to virtually move ahead along the street coupled with the real-time camera scene and identify POIs without actual movements in the real world. We firstly design 'Virtual Movement' layer between the physical-view and information-query layer to provide a natural interaction of the MixedWalk service. Secondly, an efficient processing method is considered for the continuous movement query composed of pie-shape region queries. A pie-shape query is described by a camera location, a viewing direction, and a visible threshold distance. Finally, we demonstrate an implementation of Android applications with the Aenigol dining district in Goyang-si of Gyeonggi-do in Korea.