Abstract- Context awareness, user friendliness, and interactivity
are very important and powerful concepts in building useful
teaching/learning environments for the benefit of mankind.
Advancements in technology are enabling us to look at new use
cases in the methods of teaching, information sharing, knowledge
dissemination, and self-learning. Learning environments are not
only for teaching things to people, but also for providing more
information to them on any subject that they may require from
time to time.
User friendliness can be enhanced with clever use of sensors to
give hands free interactivity with the devices/gadgets. Context
aware applications require sensors to get the context information.
Mobile devices like smart phones and tablets today come with a
hand full of sensors mounted on them which include one or two
cameras, a microphone, a touch screen, an accelerometer to sense
motion, and in addition have GPS and digital compass to provide
location information to applications requiring these sensory
inputs. The computational power packed in the processors used
in these devices/gadgets including special support for graphics
processing, the near general purpose computer like operating
system environments, and the quality of cameras available, are
all enabling application developers to map some serious
computer vision based applications on today’s mobile devices.
This reality has encouraged us to get into development of
Augmented Reality (AR) based interactive learning environments
on mobile devices, leading to our development of a software
framework for AR applications development and also
development of an AR book and an AR board.
AR has been called the eighth mass medium, after print,
recordings, cinema, radio, television, Internet and mobile phones.
There is ample scope for enhancing the learning/teaching
experiences of the users with AR based learning environments.
AR makes learning more effective and an enjoyable experience
by providing more realistic information with the use of 3D
graphics and animated models.