Mobile, Collaborative Augmented Reality Using Cloudlets

The evolution in mobile applications to support advanced interactivity and demanding multimedia features is still ongoing. Novel application concepts (e.g. mobile Augmented Reality (AR)) are however hindered by the inherently limited resources available on mobile platforms (not withstanding the dramatic performance increases of mobile hardware). Offloading resource intensive application components to the cloud, also known as ”cyber foraging”, has proven to be a valuable solution in a variety of scenarios. However, also for collaborative scenarios, in which data together with its processing are shared between multiple users, this offloading concept is highly promising. In this paper, we investigate the challenges posed by offloading collaborative mobile applications. We present a middleware platform capable of autonomously deploying software components to minimize average CPU load, while guaranteeing smooth collaboration. As a use case, we present and evaluate a collaborative AR application, offering interaction between users, the physical environment as well as with the virtual objects superimposed on this physical environment.