Handling occlusions in video-based augmented reality using depth information

Augmented Reality (AR) composes virtual objects with real scenes in a mixed environment where human–computer interaction has more semantic meanings. To seamlessly merge virtual objects with real scenes, correct occlusion handling is a significant challenge. We present an approach to separate occluded objects in multiple layers by utilizing depth, color, and neighborhood information. Scene depth is obtained by stereo cameras and two Gaussian local kernels are used to represent color, spatial smoothness. These three cues are intelligently fused in a probability framework, where the occlusion information can be safely estimated. We apply our method to handle occlusions in video-based AR where virtual objects are simply overlapped on real scenes. Experiment results show the approach can correctly register virtual and real objects in different depth layers, and provide a spatial-awareness interaction environment. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The paper presents an approach to do occlusion handling using depth information. (a), (b) show an example of the occlusions before and after our approach. (c) shows the depth relationship. Different color denotes for different depth layers.