Impact of light on augmented reality : Evaluating how different light conditions affect the performance of Microsoft HoloLens 3D applications

Sammanfattning: Microsoft HoloLens is a headmounted augmented reality system providing users the ability to experience three-dimensional virtual content. This could be used in applications aimed at industry where users could use augmented reality to easily access information and receive instructions. For this to be suitable for industry, the system must be robust. One property of robustness was chosen for this thesis: system performance in conditions of different levels of light. A prototype implementing a use case for future industry was developed, as well as two additional smaller applications to facilitate experiments. Experiments were performed to investigate how different light levels affects the functionality in a 3D holographic application running on HoloLens and how the visibility of virtual content was affected in conditions with bright and heterogeneous backgrounds. The results showed that the functionality of the holographic application was not significantly affected except in very dark conditions, and that bright and messy backgrounds pose a problem to hologram visibility.