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Augmented reality technology
Understanding Augmented Reality Monitoring in OpenManage Mobile | 389
2 Augmented reality technology
Augmented Reality Monitoring leverages the latest advancements in augmented reality to create its data
center environment. It uses Quick Sync 2 to quickly and securely retrieve information about its environment to
enhance the camera feed with overlays that show the most relevant details. This section describes some of
the details regarding each technology and how to best utilize them.
2.1 Understanding augmented reality
Augmented reality is a technology that uses a camera, embedded motion sensors, and machine learning to
create a simulated, three-dimensional environment that appears alongside the camera feed. Augmented
Reality Monitoring utilizes ARCore and ARKit 2, in Android and iOS mobile devices respectively. At a high
level, augmented reality runs in a feedback loop that performs the following:
1. Reads the visual information from the camera feed and identifies some trackable details, which could
be certain lights or patterns.
2. A short time later, again reads from the camera feed and attempts to locate the same trackable
details.
3. Uses information captured from the embedded motion sensors and physical motion interpretations of
the hardware to determine the approximate distance, rotations, motions, and light level of each
trackable detail.
4. From the tracking interpretations, updates the three-dimensional environment with new estimates
about surfaces and objects that were detected.
When the augmented reality sensors detect enough information to accurately understand a surface or an
object, the environment creates an anchor to match that surface or object. The anchor is created with details
of where it exists in the three-dimensional environment and its size and facing. By knowing where these
anchors are and by reading the motion sensors, an augmented reality system can accurately detect when the
camera points towards or away from the anchors and can update the positions of its three-dimensional
environment to map alongside the camera feed. Augmented Reality Monitoring uses these anchors to find the
location of the hardware and to draw overlays that are fixed to the anchors.
There are important considerations when using any augmented reality-based technology, regarding the
accuracy of the camera feed and the motion sensors. Because the camera needs to be able to accurately
identify and detect unique details, the user should keep the following guidelines in mind:
• The room should be well lit to make sure that there is enough contrast to determine unique patterns in
the camera feed.
• The room should not contain any moving objects, which would give conflicting information when
compared with the motion sensors.
• The augmented reality device must move around slightly to obtain enough information to accurately
predict an anchor. It is recommended to point the camera at different angles to try and capture
additional positioning information.
• However, the device must not move too quickly, or the motion sensors may exceed their accuracy
thresholds and fail to predict the physical motion correctly. This could cause anchors to drift away
from their expected locations in the camera feed.
Note: The health and age of the mobile device can also have a detrimental effect on the tracking
performance, which can also cause inaccurate detections or drift.