An Enhancement of Outdoor Location-Based Augmented Reality Anchor Precision through VSLAM and Google Street View

Outdoor Location-Based Augmented Reality (LAR) applications require precise positioning for seamless integrations of virtual content into immersive experiences. However, common solutions in outdoor LAR applications rely on traditional smartphone sensor fusion methods, such as the Global Positioning System (GPS) and compasses, which often lack the accuracy needed for precise AR content alignments. In this paper, we introduce an innovative approach to enhance LAR anchor precision in outdoor environments. We leveraged Visual Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (VSLAM) technology, in combination with innovative cloud-based methodologies, and harnessed the extensive visual reference database of Google Street View (GSV), to address the accuracy limitation problems. For the evaluation, 10 Point of Interest (POI) locations were used as anchor point coordinates in the experiments. We compared the accuracies between our approach and the common sensor fusion LAR solution comprehensively involving accuracy benchmarking and running load performance testing. The results demonstrate substantial enhancements in overall positioning accuracies compared to conventional GPS-based approaches for aligning AR anchor content in the real world.