Augmented Reality geo-referencing through Social Networking

Abstract

Today we’re surrounded by and involved in technology so much that it has become an embedded component to our very lives and an integral part of our beings. Among these many technological advances, Augmented Reality is held in high esteem for its one undeniable feature which makes it ever more useful; expanding our physical limits of being human beings. Since its discovery, there have been many applications of augmented reality, and with the advancement of technology and the miniaturization of what we call the computer, Mobile Augmented Reality could be said to be the most desired type of augmented reality as of today. One aspect which always seems to follow all mobile devices is, location sensitive applications; which in turn gives rise to, Location based Augmented Reality Browsing. There are currently some well known augmented reality browsers such as, Layar, Wikitude and Junaio. But they can only be utilized effectively on geographic locations where Points of Interest, are abundantly available. Though this holds true for most developed countries, developing countries on the other hand, contain far too few geo referenced points of interest for any location based augmented reality application to survive. This project aims to bridge that gap by building a new sustainable model for an augmented reality browser, based on an existing well known augmented reality framework, but importantly, adding a crucial component to it which will self populate a database with points of interest using the users of the application themselves, that may even be leveraged by any future application.