Point Cloud Compression for Augmented Reality-Based Campus Navigation Application

Due to the high demand of Augmented Reality for civilian and military applications, it has been taking a lot of attention recently. In our country the university's campus is such urgent demanding of such applications where new coming students, guests, and temporary teachers might have trouble finding buildings, facilities, and administrations on a vast university campus with many buildings, making it difficult to move among them. This paper presents the implementation of a complete Campus Navigation System using Augmented Reality technique that is user-friendly and applicable for almost all hand-held smart devices. The proposed applications are built with Unity using ARcore, NavMesh and point cloud localization techniques, and carried out at the campus of Al-Nahrain University College of Information Engineering in Baghdad Iraq. Due to the large size of point cloud data and the current limitation in wireless channels, a method of point cloud compression is also presented. MATLAB is used for the purpose of system efficiency analysis. According to test results, the proposed application could improve pathfinding efficiency and usefulness on campus.