Employing location-aware handheld augmented reality to assist utilities field personnel

Employing mobile augmented reality (AR) to assist utility field personnel is a novel approach, which has become considerable in recent years with the advent of AR applications running on handheld computing devices. Unlike conventional solutions, AR provides a more intuitive interface to access complex underground utility network data in the field. As a result, common field tasks concerning maintenance and operation are accomplished more efficiently while reducing unintended damage and increasing general safety on site. In this scope we present VIDENTE – an outdoor handheld AR system, which provides 3D information of the local underground network infrastructure which is visualised to field personnel on a handheld device. Fig. 1: VIDENTE handheld augmented reality client setup. Fig. 2: Screenshot: Presentation of the subsurface infrastructure information on the client device (data courtesy of Salzburg AG). Fig. 3: Field worker using the VIDENTE client to interact with the environment.