Development of a collaborative geospatial augmented reality system in support of urban design practice

Efficient collaboration between participants is fundamental for urban planning and design processes, but it is not necessarily easy to achieve. This limitation depends on several factors including differences in participants' backgrounds and the limitations and the complexity of the tools used to support those process. Furthermore, the collaborative component of urban planning and design projects is often limited to meetings where designs and plans are assembled and discussed. The solution presented in this paper, aims at overcoming those problems through a collaborative geospatial augmented reality application. The proposed system integrates innovative technologies of augmented reality with 3D modelling and spatial analysis tools. Results of our experimentations demonstrate the potential of such a system for improving interactive and collaborative urban design. This paper provides a comparison of our approach with existing ones and proposes future developments in the field. RESUME. Si la bonne collaboration entre participants est fondamentale dans les processus d'amenagement et de design, elle n'est pas toujours facile a mettre en œuvre. Differents facteurs expliquent cette difficulte, allant des differences d'origines des participants, a la complexite des outils utilises par les experts. Par ailleurs, la composante collaborative des projets d'amenagement et de design est souvent limitee aux seules phases d'assemblage et de discussions sur les plans. Precisement, dans cet article nous proposons une solution fondee sur une application de realite augmentee geospatiale collaborative. Le systeme propose associe des technologies de realite augmentee innovantes et des outils de modelisation 3D et d'analyse spatiale. Les resultats de nos tests montrent la pertinence de ce type de systeme pour ameliorer l'interaction et la collaboration en design urbain. Cet article fournit une comparaison entre l'approche developpee et les approches existantes et propose finalement des voies de developpement futures.