Classifying handheld Augmented Reality: Three categories linked by spatial mappings

Handheld Augmented Reality (AR) relies on a spatial coupling of the on-screen content with the physical surrounding. To help the design of such systems and to classify existing AR systems, we present a framework made of three categories and two spatial relationships. Our framework highlights spatial relationships between the physical world, the representation of the physical world on screen and the augmentation on screen. Within this framework, we study the relaxing of the spatial coupling between the digital information and the physical surrounding in order to enhance interaction by breaking the constraints of physical world interaction.