4.2. Study 1: robustness of marker technology
As real world libraries can exist in diverse environments, there
are a number of extraneous variables that may affect the performance
of a mobile AR system. While marker technology is robust
to certain visual noise and viewing techniques (i.e. distance, poor
lighting, and so on), changes in the environment can result in false
positives or negative recognitions, which is an undesirable outcome
for tasks like sorting and searching. Thus, a preliminary study was
conducted to determine the suitability of markers for use in library
environments. Additionally, this study aimed to determine the ideal
marker characteristics for successful tracking in a library situation.
This experiment utilized several frame markers taken from the
set of sample markers provided by Vuforia. As this experiment is
testing marker robustness, the ID of each marker is not important.
Each marker was printed at a size of 150 mm2 with a 35 mm border
of white paper. For the experiment, these markers were affixed
to book spines and positioned on a shelf. This setup mimics the
organisation of books in a real world library. The following conditions
were tested:
Distance variations