Marker based initial positioning with ARCore/ARKit?

Question

problem situation: Creating AR-Visualizations always at the same place (on a table) in a comfortable way. We don't want the customer to place the objects themselves like in countless ARCore/ARKit examples.

I'm wondering if there is a way to implement those steps:

1. Detect marker on the table
2. Use the position of the marker as the initial position of the AR-Visualization and go on with SLAM-Tracking

I know there is something like an Marker-Detection API included in the latest build of the TangoSDK. But this technology is limited to a small amount of devices (two to be exact...).

best regards and thanks in advance for any idea

Answer 1

I am also interested in that topic. I think the true power of AR can only be unleashed when paired with environment understanding.

I think you have two options:

1. wait for the new Vuforia 7 to be released and supposedly it is going to support visual markers with ARCore and ARKit.
2. Engage CoreML / Computer Vision - in theory it is possible but I haven't seen many examples. I think it might be a bit difficult to start with (e.g. build and calibrate model).

However Apple have got it sorted: https://youtu.be/E2fd8igVQcU?t=2m58s

Answer 2

if using Google Tango, you can implement this using the built in Area Descriptions File (ADF) system. The system has a holding screen and you are told to "walk around". Within a few seconds, you can relocalise to an area the device has previously been. (or pull the information from a server etc..)

Googles VPS (Visual Positioning Service) is a similar Idea, (closed Beta still) which should come to ARCore. It will, as far as I understand, allow you to localise a specific location using the camera feed from a global shared map of all scanned locations. I think, when released, it will try to fill the gap of an AR Cloud type system, which will solve these problems for regular developers.

See https://developers.google.com/tango/overview/concepts#visual_positioning_service_overview

The general problem of relocalising to a space using pre-knowledge of the space and camera feed only is solved in academia and other AR offerings, hololens etc... Markers/Tags aren't required. I'm unsure, however, which other commercial systems provide this feature.