An interactive Augmented Reality system for Engineering education

This paper presents an innovative approach to enhance students’ learning and understanding of digital design using complex commercial design flows. The architecture of our experimental system is based on new technologies such as Augmented Reality (AR), XML metadata, and an XML integrated database system. The database provides the content for multimedia presentation in a virtual environment, visualised through AR, which enables students to engage effectively in the process of learning. These include textual descriptions, animated videos, auditory information, images and 3D computer generated objects of related diagrams and designs. An XML interface will allow the teacher to input multimedia information into the database remotely in a simple way. Using an AR interface the content of the database will be visualized in real time using state-of-the-art virtual reality technologies, i.e. head mounted displays, tracking devices, etc. Through this interface, users will be able to interact collaboratively. Using collaborative AR the students will also develop team skills that play a significant role in the learning process. Finally, we provide an illustrative description of how our experimental system will operate, and we present some initial results.