Evaluation of Augmented Reality-Based Building Diagnostics Using Third Person Perspective

Abstract

Comprehensive user evaluations of outdoor augmented reality (AR) applications in the architecture, engineering, construction and facilities management (AEC/FM) industry are rarely reported in the literature. This paper presents an AR prototype system for infrared thermographic façade inspection and its evaluation. The system employs markerless tracking based on image registration using natural features and a third person perspective (TPP) augmented view displayed on a hand-held smart device. We focus on evaluating the system in user experiments with the task of designating positions of heat spots on an actual façade as if acquired through thermographic inspection. User and system performance were both assessed with respect to target designation errors. The main findings of this study show that positioning accuracy using this system is adequate for objects of the size of one decimeter. After ruling out the system inherent errors, which mainly stem from our application-specific image registration procedure, we find that errors due to a human’s limited visual-motoric and cognitive performance, which have a more general implication for using TPP AR for target designation, are only a few centimeters.