State of the art and future developments of the Augmented Reality for measurement applications

Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that enriches the sensorial perception of a person by adding virtual contents directly on the user’s surrounding environment. The modern AR platforms, such as smartphones and head-mounted displays, are moving the application fields of this technology from research centers to a wide range of application domains. The aims of the paper are to highlight the role of measurements in an AR system and the AR as support to the measurements. In the first part, the evolution of AR concept and platforms that can implement AR systems, are presented. An AR system requires measurements of user and objects position and orientation, for this reason, several tracking systems and some calibration procedures are described. A survey of applications using the AR as user interface of measurement system is presented. Furthermore, future trends for researches oriented on the development of calibration procedures for tracking systems are discussed.