Potential of Mobile Augmented Reality for Infrastructure Field Tasks

During construction, inspection, maintenance, and repair of transportation infrastructure projects, field engineers and technicians frequently refer to maps and other technical documents to check the location of structures and structural elements, and to collect data related to these structures. The concept of Mobile Augmented Reality System for Infrastructure Field Tasks (MARSIFT) will not only allow users to automatically retrieve the necessary information in real-time, based on the location and orientation of the user and within the specific task context, but it will also display this information as augmentation to the view of the surrounding real world objects such as roads, bridges, and tunnels. In this paper, the potential and limitations of the MARSIFT concept from the points of views of tracking, 3D GIS/CAD databases, and user interactions are discussed.