URBANAssistant: An Augmented Reality and GIS based Navigation System in Urban Environment

Bilal Farooq, investigator

This project presents the URBANAssistant framework, a navigation system in urban environment, which couples augmented reality and geographic information system using widely used handheld mobile smart devices. This project compliments the hypothesis that an efficient and usable system can be made even without using sophisticated augmented reality hardware. It exploits the processing power and the hardware available on current smart devices to achieve the goal. This framework has been tested in a realtime uncontrolled environment by implementing a prototype of the framework for downtown Montreal. This project supports the case of augmented reality as a strong and effective tool available to GIScience for visualization of geo-spatial data in a better and meaningful way.

General system diagram of URBANAssistant

URBANAssistant’s output at the intersection of Sherbrooke and University Streets

URBANAssistant’s output in bright day light (showing students and staff associated with the course