Performance Characterization of Mobile Phones in Augmented Reality Marker Tracking

Abstract

Collaborative Augmented Reality (CAR) systems allow multiple users to share a real work environment including computer-generated images in real time. Currently, the hardware features of most mobile phones not only provide excellent multimedia services, but they also include wireless network capabilities to support local and remote communication and thus, they provide a natural platform for CAR systems. However, the wide variety of these hardware features can have important effects on the performance of the mobile CAR applications. This paper presents the experimental characterization of mobile phones for Augmented Reality marker tracking, a core task that any CAR application must include. The characterization is performed in regard to well-known performance metrics in distributed systems, and the results show that the most time consuming stage is the marker detection stage, followed by the image acquisition stage. Therefore, the improvement of these applications should be addressed to improve these stages. Moreover, the rendering stage is decoupled on some devices, depending on the operative system used. This decoupling process allows avoiding low refresh rates, facilitating the collaborative work. These results can be used as the basis for an efficient design of CAR systems and applications.