Augmented Reality Sandtable
In 2013, while working at the University of Central Florida Institute for Simulation and Training, I collaborated with researchers at the Army Research Lab to bootstrap project ARES, or Augmented REality Sandtable. I designed and built several fully adjustable sand table prototypes implementing ideas from the Augmented Reality Sandbox at UC Davis; with all the mechanical design done in Autodesk Inventor, including modeling of projection geometries to be used in the software. The design incorporated wood table container with modular pocket extensions and white board lid, a short throw projector, a Xbox Kinect 3D camera sensor, video conferencing camera, high-resolution monitor, network switch, UDP Packet Mirror, and power for several computers/laptops. Initially I built one prototype, and we integrated several software pieces like OneSAF, OpenCV gesture recognition, AR object drops by fiducial markers, etc. I was then tasked to build a second prototype, which we then used together with the first prototype as a remote collaboration testbed. Remote collaboration exercises between the two prototypes at separate locations were successfully conducted, and later demonstrated between two sand tables at the Army and Marine Corp booths during the I/ITSEC 2014 Conference. Eventually I built over 5 prototypes for the use of different researchers and ARL software contractors.
