Proceedings of the IEEE, Special Issue on Applications of Augmented Reality Environments

A key challenge in cyber-physical computing is that users cannot see the cyber information needed to make decisions about physical world elements and processes directly in the physical context that they are relevant. For example, as a construction worker walks around a site, they cannot see the 3D building plan for the project directly overlaid on the walls in front of them to determine if elements are built as planned. Instead, the construction worker may use a tablet or laptop to call up the relevant parts of the plan and then mentally compare what he is looking at with the 3D model on the screen. Mistakes can be made because the construction worker cannot directly see what is supposed to be built on top of what is actually built in the physical world.

Mobile augmented reality and virtual reality are new approaches to visualizing cyber information that seeks to bridge this cyber-physical disconnect. With mobile augmented reality, a mobile device’s camera, such as an iPhone or Android phone camera, is used to capture imagery, which is fused with virtual information, such as highlighted regions of the image, and displayed one the device’s touchscreen. Users can see the virtual information directly rendered on top of the imagery captured by the camera. Virtual reality provides users with an immersive interaction experience with cyber-information.

Augmented reality and virtual reality are showing significant promise to overcome cyber-physical visualization challenges in numerous domains, such as medicine, construction, advertising, manufacturing, and gaming. Despite the promise of these techniques and their early application to many domains, there are still significant research challenges related to localization, sensor noise, indoor localization, social information sharing, information fusion, complex information visualization, and computational complexity. This special issue plans to explore both cutting edge research applications of augmented and virtual reality, as well as advances in the underlying computer vision, indoor/outdoor localization, and human computer interaction techniques that make it possible.

The articles in this special issue will explore the next generation of virtual and augmented reality within the context of its applications to high impact domains, such as manufacturing and medicine, and the research challenges of providing immersive experiences. The following topics are of particular interest:

• Multi-disciplinary applications of virtual and augmented reality
• Case studies on the use of augmented and virtual reality in critical applications
• Computer vision approaches to virtual and augmented reality
• Architectures and approaches for supporting augmented and virtual reality with cloud computing
• Sensor data analysis techniques for context detection and delivery of relevant cyber information for display in virtual and augmented reality applications
• Social network approaches for sharing augmented reality data and discovering relevant cyber information
• Comparative studies of virtual and augmented reality approaches
• Novel augmented reality approaches for providing other augmented sensor outputs, such as sound augmentation to alert blind people of nearby hazards
Prospective authors should prepare their papers in accordance with the guidelines of the Proceedings of the IEEE.

Important Dates:
Submission of full papers: June 30, 2013
First decision notification: Aug 30, 2013
Submission revised papers: Sep 30, 2013
Final decision notification: Oct 31, 2013
Submission camera-ready papers: Nov 15, 2013

Guest Editors:
Dr. Jules White, Virginia Tech
Dr. Mani Golparvar-Fard, University of Illinois
Dr. Douglas C. Schmidt, Vanderbilt University

For full author guidelines: http://www.ieee.org/publications_standards/publications/authors/author_submission.html
To submit an article: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/pieee

For questions about the special issue: augmented.reality@dre.vanderbilt.edu