New Augmented Reality Applications - Teaching through Multi-User Virtual Environments - page 381

involved in this experience as students, professors
and developers.
First of all, we want to apply our system to
other areas of Inorganic Chemistry. We also want
to apply it to other disciplines like mathemat-
ics (vector and linear algebra), physics (vector
physics) and engineering (applications). Finally,
we want to improve the tracking and rendering
capabilities of the system.
We would like to increase the number of
models of crystal structures, crystalline systems
and molecules. That way the students will have
a larger number of examples to learn from. With
the increase in models, new markers will be cre-
ated. Likewise, the number of applications will
be increased to handle both new models and new
markers.
Another user suggestion is to maintain a
classroom permanently outfitted for collaborative
AR education. With a permanent classroom, the
time to start using the system will be substantially
reduced. Furthermore, the new classroom will
fulfill other requirements. For example, it will
allow having a good beamer, having windows
with blinds to avoid the sunlight, and improving
the control the lighting conditions. The students'
desks could also be better arranged for learning
using our AR system.
As a short-term objective we also plan to im-
prove our system's interactivity. This interaction
will appear between the system and the student,
and it will depend on the 3D structure to be studied.
The goal is to provide the student with feedback
from the computer in order to help him acquire
a better knowledge of Inorganic Chemistry. This
interaction will be done in two ways. First, we
will support interaction between certain patterns,
so that the user will be capable of pointing at
some parts of the 3D model. The user will also
be able to identify them, having a response from
the computer depending on whether the answer
is right or wrong. Secondly, several quizzes will
be integrated in the AR application. They will be
made of a set of questions that will be displayed

on the computer screen while student is using
the system. Students will then be able to answer
using the keyboard while moving the 3D model.
Since the system does not have special or ex-
pensive requirements, some users suggested that
we adapt it to distance and on-line learning. The
idea is to develop a virtual learning environment,
so that the professor can send both the application
and the marker to the students. Then, the students
would run the application and answer the related
questions on their own. The system would then
send the answers back to the professor either by
email or using a virtual environment application.
Due to the remarkable technological advances
in mobile devices in the last few years, we can
have devices with the features needed to run
Augmented Reality applications. These devices,
like PDAs and mobile phones, are becoming more
and more popular and inexpensive. The number
of mobile devices is expected to reach one bil-
lion by 2012 (Wagner & Schmalstieg, 2007). For
this reason, we want to migrate our system from
computers to mobile devices, such as ultra-mobile
PCs (UMPCs), personal digital assistants (PDAs)
and SmartPhones. Our objective is to provide the
student with a tool embedded in his own mobile
device, allowing him autonomous learning without
using a computer.

CONCLUSION

We have introduced an AR system for teaching
Inorganic Chemistry at the university level. Our
system uses inexpensive cameras and open-source
software to set up a collaborative environment
that supports several groups of students interact-
ing with material and compound structures. The
structures are modeled in 3D using VRML. In-
teraction is handled using hand-held markers and
ARToolkit, a public domain AR software library.
There are clear advantages in using this pow-
erful tool for educational purposes in Inorganic
Chemistry. AR introduces improvements that