Overview


The ERGIS (Enriched Reality Geographic Information System) project is part of the Sonarion-Hadassah Virtual Reality Academic Research Center at Hadassah College.

Enriched Reality (or Augmented Reality) is a close relative to Virtual Reality. Unlike virtual reality in which the system generates a fully artificial environment, enriched reality systems combine the real scene viewed by the user and a virtual scene generated by the computer that augments the scene with additional information.

As a result, enriched reality systems must be interactive, context-aware and work in real-time, a requirement which poses many technological challenge and calls for special considerations of usability questions.






Linking Enriched Reality with Geographical Information Systems



The ERGIS project uses a wearable Head Mounted Display (HMD) with see-through eye glasses, that projects location-based information on the retina. Furthermore, it uses an inclinometer that records the head's movements and a GPS based locator.

In the ERGIS project I designed and implemented a system that uses the position information from the HMD, retrieves relevant data from GIS/Web resources and sends it back to the HMD. The system was implemented using Java technologies and XML/SOAP as an interface to the web. The prototype system communicates with Froogle, GoogleEarth, and ESRI-based Databases and uses openGL based overlays as an interface.

A potential scenario for using such a system would be shopping for a certain product. The user can specify the product details (i.e. price, model etc.) to the system; this information, together with the user's location is used to retrieve a list of relevant nearby shops from the web; the list of shops is then presented back to the HMD as small indicators where those shops are, together with some additional information (such as product's price). As the user moves, the indicators move as well, showing new shops that become visible. New queries are made automatically as the user changes his/her location.





Relevant Publications and Presentations


  • Dayan E., Golan D. and Schlesinger D., "ERGIS 2.0 – Enriched Reality Geographical Info System", 4th VR Symposium, Virtual Reality, Associated Technologies and Rehabilitation, Haifa, Israel, June 2006.


  • Augmented Reality Systems: Background and Current Research of AR Systems: Presentation for undergraduate students at Hadassah College, Israel.