Simulated Airflow Around Dynamic 3D Objects Using Augmented Reality

The long-term vision of augmented reality is to seamlessly integrate digital content into the real world, which provides new means to make physical processes visible that are usually invisible to the naked eye.

One such example is the motion of air around us. With the help of a head-mounted augmented reality device, an interactive air flow simulation and the tracking of real-world objects, we develop a flow visualization tool box in which users interactively explore approximations of the real-world airflow around real objects.

Since the flows respond dynamically to real-world objects, the influence of obstacle size and air flow speed on the creation and movement of vortices can be explored interactively using geometry-based flow visualization techniques, including pathlines and streaklines.

Florent Germain, the team Lead at Vuforia, showcased this demo of a simulated airflow around dynamic 3D objects, leveraging Vuforia Multi Model Target 360 and simultaneous Image Target tracking.

Vuforia is an augmented reality software development kit for mobile devices that enables the creation of augmented reality applications. It uses computer vision technology to recognize and track planar images and 3D objects in real time.

The purpose of the demo was the tracking and the realtime, it’s not real CFD, no real physics behind it. But with more power, it would be possible to do so.

Source: Florent Germain Twitter & ETH Zürich

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