Prototyping Applications with DART, The Designer’s Augmented Reality Toolkit

In this position statement, we describe our approach to prototyping AR applications embodied in the Designer’s Augmented Reality Toolkit (DART), a system we are creating to allow non-technologists to easily create augmented reality (AR) experiences. Over the past year our research has been focused on the creation of this toolkit that can be used by technologists, designers, and students alike to rapidly prototype AR applications. Current approaches to AR development involve extensive programming and content creation as well as knowledge of technical topics involving cameras, trackers, and 3D geometry. The result is that it is very difficult even for technologists to create AR experiences. Our goal was to eliminate these obstacles that prevent such users from being able to experiment with AR. The DART system is based on the Macromedia Director multimedia-programming environment, the defacto standard for multimedia content creation. DART uses the familiar Director paradigms of a score, sprites and behaviors to allow a user to visually create complex AR applications. DART also provides low-level support for the management of trackers, sensors, and camera via a Director plug-in Xtra.