Steerable Augmented Reality with the Beamatron

Beamatron is a new, augmented-reality concept that combines a projector and a Kinect camera on a pan-tilt moving head. The moving head is used to place the projected image almost anywhere in a room. Meanwhile, the depth camera enables the correct warping of the displayed image for the shape of the projection surface and for the projected graphics to react in physically appropriate ways. For example, a projected virtual car can be driven on the floor of the room but will bump into obstacles or run over ramps. As another application, we consider the ability to bring notifications and other graphics to the attention of the user by automatically placing the graphics within the user’s view.