Augmented Paper

Abstract

While media consumption has shifted away from using paper to digital screens, in certain situations paper is better suited than screens because of its more intuitive handling. But a sheet of paper is only able to contain static content. Augmented Paper could solve this issue. Augmented Paper is the idea of projecting virtual content onto a sheet of paper using augmented reality techniques. The content should react dynamically to deformation, rotation and translation of the sheet, creating the illusion that the content is printed on the paper.

To achieve this, a marker-based augmented reality pipeline using Vuforia has been implemented as part of this thesis. At first, limitations of Vuforia and different marker sizes and their positioning were investigated. We then tested three different methods to deform a initial flat mesh to a deformed mesh that matches the deformed paper based on the marker data and evaluated them in terms of computational feasibility and accuracy. The resulting mesh is then superimposed onto the paper to create a realistically-looking deformation. The final version uses an As-Rigid-As-Possible deformation method for surface deformation. It is able to convincingly superimpose text and video on a moderately bent sheet of paper in real time.