Marker Tracking as Visualization Interface

My idea is that I would be able to do an ARToolkit based visualization performance by using a clear table with markers I can slide, rotate, add and remove, and all those movement could correspond to events on screen. Unlike other AR videos the source video wouldn't be incorporated into the output necessarily, the markers provide an almost infinitely expressive set of UI knobs and sliders.

So far I have this:


AR User Interface from binarymillenium on Vimeo.

The lighting is difficult, the markers need to be white and black pixels but the plexiglass tends to produce reflections. Also if the light source itself is visible a marker will not be able to be right on top of it. I need a completely black backdrop under the plexiglass so there are no reflections that will obscure the markers, and also more numerous and softer diffuse lights.

One way to solve the reflection problem is to have the camera looking down at a table, though it's a little harder to get the camera up high enough, and I didn't want my hands or body to obscure the markers- the clear table idea is more elegant and self-contained.

The frame rate isn't very high, I need to work on making it all more real-time and responsive. It may have to be that one computer is capturing video and finding marker positions and sending them to another computer completely free to visualize it. Also more interpolation and position prediction could smooth things out, and cover up gaps if a marker isn't recognized in a frame, but that could produce more lag.