Exploring Brick-Based Navigation and Composition in an Augmented Reality

BUILD-IT is a planning tool based on computer vision technology, supporting complex planning and composition tasks. A group of people, seated around a table, interact with objects in a virtual scene using real bricks. A plan view of the scene is projected onto the table, where object manipulation takes place. A perspective view is projected on the wall. The views are set by virtual cameras, having spatial attributes like shift, rotation and zoom. However, planar interaction with bricks provides only position and rotation information. Object height control is equally constrained by planar interaction. The aim of this paper is to suggest methods and tools bridging the gap between planar interaction and three-dimensional control. To control camera attributes, active objects, with intelligent behaviour are introduced. To control object height, several real and virtual tools are suggested. Some of the solutions are based on metaphors, like window, sliding-ruler and floor.