Mobile augmented reality has only been made possible in the last few years, owing to the increasing processing power, more responsive hardware sensors and improved cameras of modern mobile computers. As a result of this, the mobile app markets have started filling up with augmented reality applications, ranging from games to navigation assistants. As smartphones get more popular these days, mobile Augmented Reality (AR) application is growing, especially applications that recognize an object and augment relevant information on the smartphone’s display. In this thesis, we would like to propose a mobile augmented reality system as an application that could help assist a user.
As a special case study, we propose an AR application for mobile phones that translates Chinese menus into a 3D model of the menu and the name of the menu in English. The system runs on an Android mobile phone platform. It uses image recognition to trace and register image markers (in this paper, it is a Chinese word). Then, it processed the input into a pre-processed feature database of menu items using the Features from Accelerated Segment Test (FAST) implemented by Vuforia Library. The system will check the database, and after the matching it will generate the 3D model of the food using the Unity 3D game engine. It is able to trace and render up to five 3D models of the dishes in real-time. And it will show the Graphical User Interface (GUI) when the 3D model is touched.

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