Augmented Reality Applied to LEGO Construction: AR-based Building Instructions with High Accuracy & Precision and Realistic Object-Hand Occlusions

TL;DR

BRICKxAR introduces an AR-based LEGO construction method with high accuracy, realistic occlusions, and hand interaction, improving spatial guidance and assembly precision for small parts.

Contribution

It presents a novel marker-based registration technique achieving less than 1mm error and realistic hand-object occlusion for enhanced AR LEGO instructions.

Findings

Registration accuracy less than 1mm

Realistic object and hand occlusion achieved

Validated with a LEGO Arc de Triomphe prototype

Abstract

BRICKxAR is a novel Augmented Reality (AR) instruction method for construction toys such as LEGO. With BRICKxAR, physical LEGO construction is guided by virtual bricks. Compared with the state-of-the-art, accuracy of the virtual - physical model alignment is significantly improved through a new design of marker-based registration, which can achieve an average error less than 1mm throughout the model. Realistic object occlusion is accomplished to reveal the true spatial relationship between physical and virtual bricks. LEGO players' hand detection and occlusion are realized to visualize the correct spatial relationship between real hands and virtual bricks, and allow virtual bricks to be "grasped" by real hands. The integration of these features makes AR instructions possible for small-parts assembly, validated through a working AR prototype for constructing LEGO Arc de Triomphe, quantitative measures of the accuracies of registration and occlusions, and heuristic evaluation of AR instruction features.