A novel AR application for in-vehicle entertainment and education

Passengers of different transportation means, used for private (travel, commute) or revenue-generating (tours, sightseeing) purposes, usually have restricted view of the outside environment, limited by the vehicle's walls, roof and seats. Even short journeys are boring and tiring while sights cannot be experienced properly. Currently there are no proper ways of overcoming this problem, but merely escaping it, which are not particularly constructive and isolate from co-passengers. In this paper, a novel integrated augmented reality solution is proposed, which can be installed in vehicles of different types and simultaneously used by multiple co-passengers. Using current vehicle location, a live surroundings video, captured by a 360-degree camera, can be overlaid in real time with co-passengers video, on-spot information of touristic value, Points of Interest, tailored advertisements and other messages. Remote, cloud-based technologies can be utilised, which exploit available data sources of different types and sources, in order to offer intelligent added value services. End users can experience an improved reality world by wearing a VR headset and moving their head around. Journeys can become more interesting, educative and entertaining.