VisitAR: An AR Mobile Application for Tourism

According to Lee et al. [1] Augmented Reality (AR) is one of the thirteen key technologies used in Ubiquitous city. In fact it allows users to enhance their capabilities when they are in these cities. A consistent way of using mobile Augmented Reality in Ubiquitous City concerns tourism. Tourists, once arrived in the city, can plan their sightseeing using a 3D AR map. Then, visiting the city, they can have a well-guided and customizable route through the use of a mobile AR application and, finally, when they reach some tourist attractions can gain access to several extra-content like images, videos, cultural information and much more.
In this work, we developed a mobile AR application, named “VisitAR”, which will allow users to have a more immersed experience in the sightseeing, showing city information in a more entertaining way. It was designed for handheld devices like smartphones and tablets, since usually tourists use this kind of devices and, currently, this is the most common technology that allows users to take advantages from AR techniques. However the application could be adapted to other mobile AR technologies like Optical See-Through HMD, as the upcoming Google Glass. The application was developed with the AR browser Junaio. In our work, we chose the Oulu city as case study, because this Ubiquitous city has a very good free Wi-Fi connection network.

Fabio Sorrentino
University of Cagliari