Changgu Kang

Unified Context-Aware Augmented Reality Application Framework for User-Driven Tour Guides

We propose a unified context-aware augmented reality application framework that supports intelligent guidance and enables users to participate in content generation in museum guidance. It helps a user find personal interesting artifacts in art galleries by exploiting context-based behavior generation. The framework also enables them to combine augmented contents with different information to change the shape of content according to their preferences. Furthermore, it allows the users to label real objects for attaching new contents over the objects. Through demonstration in an art gallery, we found that the resulting system effectively guided users to visit and enabled them to participate in tour guidance.

Visualization and management of u-contents for ubiquitous VR

Ubiquitous Virtual Reality, where ubiquitous computing meets mixed reality, is coming to our lives based on recent developments in the two fields. In this paper, we focus on the conceptual properties of contents including definition rather than infrastructures or algorithms for Ubiquitous Virtual Reality. For this purpose, we define u-Content and its descriptor with three conceptual key properties: u-Realism, u-Intelligence, and u-Mobility. Then we address the overall scheme of the descriptor with a Context-aware Augmented Reality Toolkit for visualization and management. We also show how the proposed concept is applied in the recent applications.

ARMate: an interactive AR character responding to real objects

In the research field of augmented reality (AR), applications using interactive characters have been developed as the form of giving users information such as LEGO assembly guidance and explanation about historical artifacts. Even though these characters respond to interaction with users, they could not create substantial effects or changes in a real space. Therefore, this limitation makes users reduce their coexistence with the AR characters. In this paper, we present an interactive AR character that directly interacts with real objects. The interactive AR character automatically determines how to behave and to control these objects. At first, we make working space populated by AR characters that has a real object with which the AR character can interact. As an interactive AR character, we implement ARMate, which presents realistic responses according to changes of real objects manipulated by a user in real time. We develop ToyCart as a physical object that includes hardware devices for movement, and ARMate can control ToyCart. Finally, we expect that our AR character can increase coexistence through real object-based interaction.

Conceptualizing u-Content Ecosystem in Ubiquitous VR Environments

In this paper, we propose a concept of u-Content ecosystem in ubiquitous VR environments. We present a definition and features of u-Content ecosystem, and describe its application scenario to interacting with users in ubiquitous VR environments. We also explain the u-Content life-cycle that includes resources, contents production, growth, evolution, reproduction, and destruction.

Context-Aware Augmented Reality Authoring Tool in Digital Ecosystem

In this paper, we propose a context-aware authoring tool which users make virtual contents in-situ. In order to realize, three essential components are defined and some technical challenges are reviewed. We expect that the contents will be adaptive and responsible to dynamic environment. It will be applicable for many industries such as book publication, in-situ simulation and so on.

An Architecture for Flexible Entity Configuration in a Simulation Environment

Recently, peoples interest is on the rise for virtual simulation as witnessed from a large number of applications using virtual space. Especially, simulations for ubiquitous environment focus on generating realistic data, context, contextual interpretation and have characteristics such as systematic testing, detection of rule confliction, and provision of context-aware modules. The previous works only consider systematic functionalities, but do not consider how to easily configure entities in a simulation environment for a user. To make up for these limitations, we propose a system architecture for flexible entity configuration in a simulation environment for smart space. The proposed system architecture removes dependency which is related to a parameter among functions of each entity, and independently interprets and generates context information. An application developer can implement graphical user interface(GUI) of new entities without considering the structural dependency about overall GUI of the system. Therefore, the proposed system architecture is expected to provide flexible simulation environment for an application developer to test an entity by cost effectiveness.

Widget-Based simulator for testing smart space

In this paper, we propose a widget-based simulator for testing smart space by using virtual space. It is especially useful within this simulation field, because virtual space alleviates limited constraints such as time, space, technique, and cost. Researchers within this ubiquitous computing field use virtual space to simulate entities such as sensors, actuators, and services. Previous works focus more on systematic functions rather than simulation space configurations, and they consider only single service unit simulations. However, our proposed simulator focuses on the easy configuration of simulation space, which users want, and the simulation of entities such as detailed units (e.g., actuators, sensors, and context-awareness). Our simulator supports the set up of a variety of services by using dynamic links. For the design of our simulator, we consider widget-based virtual entities and plug-in techniques. We configure a virtual smart home in order to test our proposed simulation. We also evaluate the robustness of our proposed simulation. Finally, the proposed simulator is expected to provide a simulation environment in which simulation space and testing are made more effective for users.