Context-Aware Mobile Augmented Reality Architecture for Lifelong Learning

Virtual Instructor enabled Mobile Augmented Reality Systems (MARS) have the potential to provide continuous and autonomous instruction to human learners anytime, anyplace, and at any-pace. MARS based learning provides the advantage of a natural human-computer interface, flexible mobility, and context-aware instruction allowing learners to interact with their natural environment with augmented perceptual cues. These perceptual cues combining multi-modal animation, graphics, text, video, and voice along with empirical pedagogical techniques can elegantly orchestrate a mobile instructional tool that facilitates life-long learning. The challenge, however, is building a mobile instructional tool with capabilities for adapting to various learning environments ranging from traditional schools and outdoor learning to the workplace while also considering the cultural, geographical, and other contexts about the learner. This paper discusses a novel system/software architecture, CAARS, for developing context-aware mobile augmented reality instructional systems.