Visualization of Vehicular Traffic in Augmented Reality for Improved Planning and Analysis of Road Construction Projects

This paper describes research that investigated the application of 3D Augmented Reality (AR) for animating traffic simulation models in real time to support the planning and design of road construction projects. Traditional 3D visualization applications use Virtual Reality (VR) environments to visualize traffic simulations. The significant amount of time and human resources required to collect and incorporate statistical data about existing traffic volume and pattern can be a major drawback to the application of VR in studying the possible effect of traffic on planned construction. At the same time, the final visual output is often unconvincing as phenomenon such as unpredictable motion of pedestrians and incoming vehicles cannot be effectively represented in a VR animation. In this research, a new AR-based approach to create real time interactive traffic animations is introduced. This approach takes advantage of wireless communication techniques to facilitate continuous positional and orientation data transfer between moving vehicles and an AR animation.