Paris: Fusing Vision-based Location Tracking with Standards-based 3d Visualization and Speech Interaction on a Pda

Industrial service and maintenance is by necessity a mobile activity, and the aim of the technology reported is towards improving automated support for the technician in this endeavor. As such, a framework was developed called PARIS (PDA-based Augmented Reality Integrating Speech) that executes entirely on a commercially available PDA equipped with a small camera and wireless support. Real-time computer visionbased techniques are employed for automatically localizing the technician within the plant. Once localized, PARIS offers the technician a seamless multimodal user interface juxtaposing a VRML augmented reality view of the industrial equipment in the immediate vicinity and initiates a context-sensitive VoiceXML speech dialog concerning the equipment. Integration with the plant management software enables PARIS to access equipment status wirelessly in real-time and present it to the technician accordingly.