Augmented reality working planes: a foundation for action and construction at a distance

This paper introduces the concept of augmented reality working planes to action and construction at a distance for mobile outdoor augmented reality systems. We have based our new AR working planes technique on CAD working planes, but by using coordinate systems relative to the body they can be specified and used much more intuitively than on a desktop system. We demonstrate in this paper how AR working planes can be used for the display of information, the manipulation of existing 3D objects, and the creation of new geometry. AR working planes are particularly well suited to supporting 3D modelling in mobile outdoor AR systems. This modelling task is a particularly difficult problem, because the environment is typically at a scale much larger than the user, and direct manipulation techniques can not be used.