StandARone: Infrared-Watermarked Documents as Portable Containers of AR Interaction and Personalization

Abstract

Hybrid paper interfaces leverage augmented reality (AR) to combine the desired tangibility of paper documents with the affordances of interactive digital media. Typically, the instructions for how the virtual content should be generated are not an intrinsic part of the document but rather accessed through a link to remote resources. To enable hybrid documents to be portable containers of also the AR content, we introduce StandARone documents. Using our system, a document author can define AR content and embed it invisibly on the document using a standard inkjet printer and infrared-absorbing ink. A document consumer can interact with the embedded content using a smartphone with a NIR camera without requiring a network connection. We demonstrate several use cases of StandARone including personalized offline menus, interactive visualizations, and location-aware packaging.