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SMART: Scalable and Modular Augmented Reality Template (SMART) provides a reusable and extensible software framework for AR applications, and provides several software components required for AR applications as generic C++ libraries that can be readily combined to build specific applications. The framework separates the domain logic of an application from AR software components, so that users only need to implement application-specific functionalities and leave all AR tasks to SMART. Applications to animate construction processes and visualize underground infrastructure have been successfully built using SMART. In addition, AR application platforms such as ARQuake and ARVita have been built using SMART. The source code is released under an open source license and can be downloaded from the BitBucket hosting site.

ARQuake: ARQuake is virtual prototyping software for simulating seismic damage to high rise buildings, and assessing building structural integrity by measuring the Interstory Drift Ratio (IDR) using an augmented reality assisted algorithm. ARQuake provides first and third person views of a high-rise building, and allows the user to navigate through each story. For each story, the user can control the drift of the corner, and can apply Line Segment Detection (LSD), Augmented Reality (AR), and photogrammetry algorithms to estimate drift. The source code is released under an open source license and can be downloaded from the BitBucket hosting site.

ARVita: ARVita is an acronym for Augmented Reality Vitascope. ARVita takes advantage of the Add-On Application Programming Interface (API) provided by Vitascope, and its basic set of animation scripting statements to visualize simulated operations in a fiducial marker based tabletop Augmented Reality environment. ARVita allows multiple users wearing Head-Mounted Displays and sitting across a table to collaboratively observe and interact with visual simulations of engineering processes. A video tutorial that explains how to use ARVita can be found on the videos page of this website. The software can be downloaded and installed using the link below. The source code is also released under an open source license and can be downloaded from the BitBucket hosting site. To view an ARVita demonstration, please visit the videos page.


KEG Tracker: The KEG Tracker algorithm estimates a camera's position and orientation for a general class of mobile context-aware and robotic applications. The algorithm integrates two classic natural marker-based registration algorithms, Homography-from-detection and Homography-from-tracking, and overcomes their specific limitations of jitter and drift by applying two global constraints (geometric and appearance) to prevent tracking errors from propagating between consecutive frames. The tracking algorithm achieves an increase in both stability and accuracy, while being fast enough for real-time applications. The source code is released under an open source license and can be downloaded from the Google Code repository. To view example KEG applications, please visit the videos page.

WISE: Widely Integrated Simulation Environment (WISE) is a JavaScript enabled web application powered by Google Earth API and ASP.NET 2.0. A ubiquitous trajectory containing time-stamped location and orientation records of a mobile user tracked using RTK-GPS, PDR (inertial navigation), and electronic compass is encoded using the Keyhole Markup Language (KML) and logged on the web server. A web browser can then query the server and visualize the trajectory either online or offline by post-processing the logged KML archive. The received data packages are parsed and rendered in the Google Earth environment. WISE provides a convenient method to visually and numerically analyze indoor and outdoor position/orientation tracking data to measure accumulated drift and tracking uncertainty in context-aware engineering applications.

ARVISCOPE: ARVISCOPE is an Augmented Reality based visualization tool driven by a powerful animation authoring language that creates dynamic animated scenes of simulated operations in construction and other engineering domains. 3D animations created in ARVISCOPE are accurate and faithful graphical representations of underlying Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) models. ARVISCOPE is a fully mobile visualization platform that takes advantage of state-of-the-art position and orientation tracking technologies to update the contents of an user's view of the augmented space continuously based on the current line of sight. To view example ARVISCOPE animations, please visit the videos page.

UM-AR-GPS-ROVER: UM-AR-GPS-ROVER is an augmented reality based platform that can be used together with corresponding pieces of peripheral equipment (Head-Mounted Display, GPS receiver, and Tracker) to generate a mixed view of the real world and superimposed virtual construction graphics in outdoor environments (e.g. jobsites).

PlotStrobe: PlotStrobe is a real time chart plotting tool for the Stroboscope simulation system that can be conveniently integrated in any simulation model to generate graphical output of simulation statistics at model run-time. PlotStrobe provides the Stroboscope user with a set of new statements and functions that add programmatic chart plotting communication capability between Stroboscope and Microsoft Excel.

AutoCIS2:  AutoCIS2 implements algorithms that automatically extract the geometry, position, and orientation of steel beams and columns from a structural frame described in the CIMSteel Integration Standards (CIS/2) format. The extracted steel member geometry and pose information can be used to program installation instructions for a kinematically smart crane inside a 3D virtual world to support automated animation of simulated steel erection operations. Due to the conceptual similarity between virtual pieces of equipment and robots (both need programmed instructions to execute an elementary set of motions), AutoCIS2 also demonstrates the efficacy of the CIS/2 standard in supporting the automated erection of structural steelwork. AutoCIS2 was designed and implemented through collaborative research with Mr. Robert R. Lipman (NIST).

AutoCIS2 Demo Video (requires TSCC codec)          

          Link to NIST


VTLV: VTLV is an acronym for Virtual-Reality Time Lapse Video. By improvising on the ability to use laser scanners to create 3D as-built models of constructed facilities in real time, VTLV combines a series of such obtained 3D as-built models to monitor and measure progress on a real construction site. VTLV extends the concept of traditional time-lapse video and employs scanned as-built 3D models as snapshots (i.e. frames) instead of 2D pictorial images that are used in traditional time lapse video.

VITASCOPE: VITASCOPE is an acronym for VIsualizaTion of Simulated Construction OPErations. VITASCOPE is an open, loosely-coupled, user-extensible 3D animation description language designed specifically for 1) Visualizing simulated construction processes and resulting products in 3D; and 2) Developing higher-level construction visualization tools.

ParticleWorks: The ParticleWorks add-on for VITASCOPE presents efficient methods that engineers can use to visualize construction processes involving "fluid", unstructured materials that are generally capable of flowing (e.g. concrete, dirt, mortar, sand, slurry, and water). The work capitalizes on a classical computer graphics concept called particle systems and VITASCOPE's add-on interface to design simple, parametric text methods to represent arbitrary dynamic volumes of fluid construction materials in 3D virtual construction worlds.

KineMach: The KineMach add-on for VITASCOPE implements "smart" pieces of virtual construction equipment that can be instantiated and manipulated using simple text statements in a higher-level, contextual, construction work-like terminology. Currently implemented generic pieces of equipment include tower cranes, crawler mounted lattice boom cranes, a crawler mounted backhoes, and highway dump trucks. The work capitalizes on robust forward and inverse kinematics algorithms from robotics literature and VITASCOPE's flexible add-on interface to design high-level statements for visualizing the dynamics of articulated construction equipment in 3D virtual worlds.

PathFinder: The PathFinder add-on for VITASCOPE puts in place techniques that address the problem of describing the accurate, variable-speed motion of virtual simulation objects on realistically shaped motion trajectories in 3D visualizations of discrete-event process models. The work capitalizes on a technique of producing a very general class of interpolating cubic splines whose shape can be locally or globally controlled by simply modifying three high-level control parameters, and on innovative virtual terrain following algorithms.

ViTerra: The ViTerra add-on for VITASCOPE implements mechanisms to automatically generate photorealistic, digital, 3D terrain CAD databases to represent construction jobsite terrains in visualizations. The work capitalizes on detailed digital topographical (e.g. Digital Elevation Maps - DEMs) and aerial imagery (e.g. National Aerial Photography Program - NAPP) data that is readily available from several government (e.g. United States Geological Survey - USGS) and private organizations. ViTerra also implements animation methods to describe the evolution of virtual jobsites by depicting deformations to the generated 3D terrains in response to common construction operations such as earthmoving (e.g. digging and dumping) and trenching.

ExcelWorks: The ExcelWorks add-on for VITASCOPE allows engineers to juxtapose dynamic displays of quantitative, numerical simulated operation data alongside 3D view ports during visualization of the modeled processes. ExcelWorks capitalizes on VITASCOPE's add-on interface and the OLE automation features of MS Excel to design a text statement-controlled dynamic charting tool.

C-Collide: The C-Collide add-on for VITASCOPE can identify and report any and all undesirable conflicts that can occur among static (e.g. structure in-place, idle equipment), dynamic (e.g. active machines and workers), and abstract (e.g. hazard or protected spaces) construction resources in dynamic 3D construction process visualizations. C-Collide capitalizes on VITASCOPE's add-on interface and advanced documented algorithms for efficient collision detection between arbitrarily moving 3D geometric objects to design mechanisms for interference detection, control, and response in 3D construction process visualizations.

Dynamic Construction Visualizer: The Dynamic Construction Visualizer (DCV) is an OpenGL-based tool for the 3D animation of simulated construction processes. VITASCOPE is a much more powerful 3D visualization tool designed as the successor to the DCV. Any modeled process that can be animated in the DCV can also be animated in VITASCOPE. However, most interesting VITASCOPE animations cannot be visualized in the DCV. VITASCOPE is thus a clear choice. However, information on the DCV is provided here for academic interest.


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Laboratory for Interactive Visualization in Engineering (LIVE)

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

College of Engineering, University of Michigan

2350 Hayward Street, Suite 2105 G.G. Brown Building

Ann Arbor, MI 48109-2125, USA