Happy Measure: Augmented Reality for Mobile Virtual Furnishing

The authors present a vision based augmented reality system called Happy Measure to facilitate the measurement, 3D modeling, and visualization of furniture and other objects using a smartphone or mobile device equipped with a camera. They also study the concomitant interaction metaphors that enable interactive 3D model capture and manipulation in augmented environments. The proposed system allows for interactive measurement of an object’s size and the creation of primitive based 3D models from a single photograph. The appearance of the furniture (color textured model) is captured by the system using the underlying (or multiple) images taken by the user. This allows the user to capture textured 3D models of furniture or other objects and manipulate them virtually for visualization purposes. The authors compare two interaction metaphors used to capture 3D textured models of object to ensure easy interaction while still obtaining accurate measurements in a user test. Results suggest that one is superior in terms of measurement accuracy and also subjective user experience as it allows for continuous touch interaction on the whole screen. Virtually placing a modeled object in another location is another aspect of the presented system and the authors explore a novel interaction paradigm to perform this task along with initial user tests.