The Open Augmented Reality Teaching Book

Call for Contributors

The Open Augmented Reality Teaching Book – A foundation and good practices

Description

Teaching how to create and code Augmented Reality (AR) is an emerging topic in higher education. This should not be confused with diverse interests of teaching various subjects using AR applications and content. Rather only a few top tier universities world-wide offer courses that give instruction of how to code AR. Few have related content and none have a full curriculum on AR. The goal of this book project is to create the first comprehensive open educational resources (OER) book as a foundation for AR curricula in higher education. Because every book about this fast developing area will be already outdated when being printed the first time, we are planning for a continuous delivery of the online book by a community of contributors on a dedicated Website.

The book will be available as Open Educational Resource (OER) under the Creative-Commons-License CC-BY-SA. This is allowing use of figures and texts for own presentations under attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International. The book is planned as a living book where chapters can be reworked or added as needed.

The book production is supported by the ERASMUS+ Strategic Alliances Project for Higher Education called “Augmented Reality in Formal European University Education (AR-FOR-EU). The project AR-FOR-EU establishes and deepens a strategic partnership for teaching Augmented Reality in Higher Education at scale on undergraduate and graduate levels.

Scope

The book will cover the necessary prerequisites to understand and follow the core concepts of teaching Augmented Reality. It will have a section for advanced topics that can be covered in curricula. A section of the book will also be dedicated to a collection of good practices in teaching AR coding.

The book offers a comprehensive and introductory perspective on the topic Augmented Reality.

Contents

Foundational Chapters

  • History of AR
  • Future of AR
  • Perceptual Foundations of AR
  • Sensors and Signal Processing
  • Computer Graphics
  • Programming
  • Algorithms and Data Structures
  • Linear and Geometric Algebra

Core Chapters

Core Technologies

  • Display Technologies
  • Tracking Technologies
  • Interaction Technologies
  • Hardware Abstraction Layer

AR Development Skills

  • AR SDKs
  • Unity / Unreal Engines
  • 3D Modeling & Rendering
  • Spatial Audio
  • Interactive Graphics and Sound Design
  • Gesture and Speech Recognition and Interaction
  • Human Computer Interaction and User Centered Design

Computer Vision

  • Image Analysis
  • Image Processing
  • Object Detection and Recognition
  • 3D Sensing
  • Tracking
  • Depth Sensing

Artificial Intelligence

  • Data Mining
  • Machine Learning, Deep Learning
  • Sensor Fusion

Advanced Topics

  • AR Agile Project Management
  • AR Game Development, Gamification and Serious Games
  • AR Applications
  • AR for the Web
  • Mobile AR
  • Hardware Accelerated Computing
  • Internet of Things, Robots and Wearables
  • Hardware and Optical Design
  • 2D/3D Printing

Good Practices and Examples

  • Maker Communities
  • Workflows and Company Practices
  • Privacy, Ownership and Intellectual Property
  • Applications, Employments and Careers in AR

Contribution Model and Technical Infrastructure

The whole project follows an agile approach and is different from classic development processes of printed content. Contributors can have different roles in the overall process. We are searching for authors, reviewers, agile editors, layouters, software developers, visual artists and testers. Agile teams are responsible for the generation of chapters and act as product owners. Reviewers will review chapters and communicate with the author teams. Team champions drive forward the agile development of chapters. Layouters create Web designs for the online book and printed versions. Software developers are responsible for interactive Web graphics, application examples and other dynamic code. Visual artists are responsible for appealing visualizations. Testers will test final versions of the book.

The book uses the well known Git for version management and a GitHub organization for the creation, hosting and delivery of the book content to guarantee agile development. We use the GitHub-based issue tracking system for the communication between the community members, such as the the authors and the reviewers. Based on this content sharing and version management platform we use the static site generator Jekyll for rendering the content of the Git repository into a Web site. With every commit, a new version of the Web site is created automatically. Formatting of the content is done using a simple markdown language. Programming/layouting uses JavaScript and CSS.

Proposed Timeline

  • 1.12.2018 Interest in contributing a chapter and team building event
  • 15.12.2018 Assignment of agile teams
  • 1.3.2019 First round of drafts
  • 1.4.2019 Continuous Reviewer Feedback
  • 1.5.2019 Layouting, Programming, Finalization

Inquiries and Submissions