AR Object Layout Method Using Miniature Room Generated from Depth Data

TL;DR

This work extends the World-in-Miniature (WIM) manipulation paradigm to augmented reality by generating a real-time miniature room from depth data captured by an AR headset. A miniature room and miniature objects allow users to move and scale virtual content freely, addressing limitations of feature-point based AR placement. In a within-subjects evaluation against hand-ray interaction across two AR usage scenarios, the approach significantly reduced physical and temporal workload, though total manipulation time showed no significant difference and confirmation time increased due to mode switching between real and miniature views. The findings suggest AR layouts can benefit from hybrid workflows that combine large-scale miniature adjustments with fine-grained hand-ray refinements, with future work targeting improved mode switching and visibility.

Abstract

In augmented reality (AR), users can place virtual objects anywhere in a real-world room, called AR layout. Although several object manipulation techniques have been proposed in AR, it is difficult to use them for AR layout owing to the difficulty in freely changing the position and size of virtual objects. In this study, we make the World-in-Miniature (WIM) technique available in AR to support AR layout. The WIM technique is a manipulation technique that uses miniatures, which has been proposed as a manipulation technique for virtual reality (VR). Our system uses the AR device's depth sensors to acquire a mesh of the room in real-time to create and update a miniature of a room in real-time. In our system, users can use miniature objects to move virtual objects to arbitrary positions and scale them to arbitrary sizes. In addition, because the miniature object can be manipulated instead of the real-scale object, we assumed that our system will shorten the placement time and reduce the workload of the user. In our previous study, we created a prototype and investigated the properties of manipulating miniature objects in AR. In this study, we conducted an experiment to evaluate how our system can support AR layout. To conduct a task close to the actual use, we used various objects and made the participants design an AR layout of their own will. The results showed that our system significantly reduced workload in physical and temporal demand. Although, there was no significant difference in the total manipulation time.

Figures (13)

• Figure 1: Overview of our system.
• Figure 2: Hand menu.
• Figure 3: Appearance of the miniature room.
• Figure 4: Moving the miniature objects.
• Figure 5: Scaling the miniature room (left: before, right: after).