Augmented Reality for Construction Tasks: Doorlock Assembly∗

Augmented Reality is a technology that integrates pictures of virtual objects into images of the real world. Besides the technical problems still to be solved, for industry to be interested in this technology the additional amount of work needed to use the technology in relation to the benefit has to be visible. Furthermore the question how this integrates into the information technology infrastructure of the company is important. This paper describes an Augmented Reality demonstrator for the task of doorlock assembly into a car door that was developed trying to create a practical, realistic application that can transport the concepts behind Augmented Reality to a casual observer. To reach that goal a new fast and robust optical tracking algorithm was developed and integrated into a three-dimensional animation and rendering system, creating a real-time fully three-dimensional HMDbased training application showing how to assemble the doorlock into the door. The system was demonstrated to the general public at the Hannover Industrial Fair 1998 and this demonstration of Augmented Reality for one of the first times to a large non-expert audience created a lot of interest into this new area.