A versatile AR type 3D mobile GIS based on image navigation technology

An approach to develop an augmented reality (AR) type interface for 3D mobile GIS by integrating CCD camera, differential Global Position System (DGPS), inertial navigation system (INS), magnetometer, gyroscope and image navigation technology is presented. In the AR system, the key problem is to determine the position and orientation of the camera for overlaying the real world image with 3D spatial models in GIS database. The image sequence analysis based on landmark lines is applied in our system. An image from the sequential images is geo-referenced manually and registered in the database. Through the registered image the landmark lines are transferred onto the other unregistered images by image-to-image matching based on straight line features to compute the accurate position and orientation of the unregistered images. The procedure is repeated until all images of the sequence are registered. GPS, INS, magnetometer and gyroscope are used only for selecting buffering areas from the spatial database and detecting the mismatched landmark lines. The system is potentially applicable for personal navigation, disaster investigation, update of spatial database, daily inspection of infrastructures, etc