Projects

AR4CUP (Petri Honkamaa)
AR4CUP (Augmented Reality for Collaborative Urban Planning) is an EIT Digital project in 2019 between partners Artefacto (France), Polytecnico di Milano (Italy), and VTT. The project will bring to the market a new Augmented Reality (AR) service that will enable stakeholders and citizens to visualize on site the future urban transformation and to contribute to an interactive co-creation process giving their feedback or analysing results all along the design phase. In the project VTT develops outdoor tracking solutions to enable the most automatic and robust AR applications for end users.
VARPU (Charles Woodward)
VARPU project 2017-2018 is the largest Finnish VR/AR project ever, funded by Business Finland, with 18 partners and a total budget approaching 10 MEUR. VTT’s research focus in VARPU is in wide are AR applications, covering whole buildings, sites and factories. VTT’s work includes 1) streamlined point cloud creation, for example based on robots, laser scanned data and 360 video; 2) point cloud optimization and maintenance methods to account for changes in the environment; and 3) advanced tracking methods e.g. edge based tracking to cope with ad hoc situations and difficult areas. The methods for wide area tracking were implemented as part of VTT’s ALVAR tracking SDK and piloted together with industrial partners Granlund and Fortum.
Dynavis (Eija Kaasinen)
In the project DYNAVIS (Dynamic Visualization in Project/Service Lifecycle) 2016-2018 VTT together with TAUCHI developed together novel user experience driven visualization solutions and applied them in several case studies together with participating industrial companies KONE and Konecranes.
S-STEP (Charles Woodward)
The project S-STEP (Smart Technologies for Lifecycle Performance) is a research project within the FIMECC (Finnish Metals and Engineering Competence Cluster), where VTT develops novel interaction and data analysis tools for mobile industrial workers. The project runs over 2014-2016 and includes industrial partners such as KONE and Konecranes, among others. Website
MIRACLE (Charles Woodward)
The project MIRACLE (Mixed Reality Applications for Culture and Learning Experiences) is a research project by University of Turku, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, University of Tampere, and University of Helsinki. The project runs for two years in 2015-2016 with the main funding coming from Tekes, alongside a number of project partners from public organizations to private enterprises. Website
EIT Digital Projects (Charles Woodward, Petri Honkamaa, Alain Boyer)
VTT is participating with Augmented Reality and 3D Tracking solutions in several EIT Digital activities, most recently in 2015 with StreetSmartRetail (High Impact Initiative in Spart Spaces Action Line) and MC-DATA (Multi-Cloud Data Management in Future Cloud Action Line). See the EIT Digital website for more details. Website
DigiSpaces (Charles Woodward)
The project develops solutions for monitoring building's life cycle information based on BIM models and using mobile Augmented Reality / World Browsing technology. Research challenges include indoors locationing / tracking, where e.g. Nokia's HAIP technology will be utilized. Tekes TILA programme, project duration 2011-2013 and partners Skanska, Tekla, Pöyry, Granlund, Solibri, Nokia and Aalto University. PDF
MMR (Charles Woodward)
The project Mobile Mixed Reality (MMR) develops algorithms, methods and service applications to pilot user- and community-created, mixed reality, digital content and context-dependent search and presentation of content and information, particularly with the means of augmented reality. Part of larger project Devices Interoperability Ecosystem in ICT-SHOK (Tekes). Duration 2008-2010. Partners Nokia, Sesca, TKK, TUT. PDF, Website
AR4BC (Charles Woodward)
The project AR4BC (Augmented Reality for Building and Construction Industry) develops mobile augmented reality tools based on 4D BIM models. The applications enable real time visualization and comparison of scheduled plans with the actual sitation at construction site, as well as multimedia feedback to the BIM system using the mobile terminal. Research challenges include feature/model based markerless tracking, together with wireless transmission and interaction with large 4D BIM models. Tekes VAMOS programme. Duration 2008-2010. Partners Tekla, Skanska, Pöyry, Buildercom, DeskArtes, Adactive. PDF, PDF Finnish, Video, YouTube
AR-Sisustus (Charles Woodward)
The project develops augmented reality solutions for interior design applications. Augmented reality enables people to visualize virtual furniture models in real spaces, e.g. living rooms. The project research topics include both stand-alone, web based and mobile solutions, using different display devices such as PC monitor, hand held PCs, data glasses, and camera phones. Tekes TILA programme, duration 2008-2010, partners VividWorks, Floobs, Rautakesko, UPCode, DeskArtes, SenseTrix. PDF
MR-Conference (Charles Woodward)
The project will develop a prototype and proof-of-concept of video conference meeting taking place seamlessly between Second Life and the real world, by means of Mixed Reality. Some participants of the meeting occupy a space in Second Life while others are located around a table in the real world, however all participants visible in both two spaces simultaneously. The project is carried out on OpenSource basis in co-operation between VTT and HUT as research organizations, and Nokia and IBM as industrial partners. Tekes TILA programme, duration 2008-2009. PDF, Video
NOSE (Tommi Karhela)
The project NOSE (Nomadic Use of a Plant model) studies methods and tools for ubiquitous plant model usage. Location aware services, augmented and virtual reality techniques are studied in process industry surroundings in order to provide plant model services to a mobile device. Tekes Ubicom programme. Duration 2007-2009. Partners Pöyry, Fortum, Metso, Wärtsilä, Intergraph, Space Systems, Nokia, CADMatic, TR-Consulting. PDF
AugAsse (Tapio Salonen)
Augmented Assembly is a research project at VTT, where AR technology is applied to increase assembly efficiency. In augmenting assembly work, the assembly worker is guided by virtual objects of components and assembly tools, and visual assembly instructions. The worker sees the augmented view through light weight head mounted devices (e.g. data glasses), and sensors provide feedback from the performed operations. Website, PDF Brochure
Plamos (Tommi Karhela)
The VTT funded project PLAMOS 2005-2007 integrates augmented reality user interface with information stored in process plant operative applications, i.e automaton systems, engineering databases and maintenance systems. The Plamos prototype utilises standard application interfaces when accessing information from plant databases to the maintenance workers' user interface. PDF Brochure, PPT Poster
NASE (Timo Urhemaa)
The NASE project brings together a multidisciplinary team of researchers whose aim is to develop solutions for interactive environments that are embedded with various smart technologies. The solutions are understandable and easy to learn for the users. To reach this aim, the project applies a novel interaction concept, based on the concept of affordance. This interaction concept is called the "Affordance Table". PDF Brochure
Special (Stephen Fox)
Development and introduction of new production methods which can reduce production times and production costs of Special Products PDF Slides
MUSCLE (Sanni Siltanen)
MUSCLE is an EC-sponsored Network of Excellence that aims at establishing and fostering closer collaboration between research groups in multimedia datamining and machine learning. The Network integrates the expertise of over forty research groups working on image and video processing, speech and text analysis, statistics and machine learning. The goal is to explore the full potential of statistical learning and cross-modal interaction for the (semi-)automatic generation of robust meta-data with high semantic value for multimedia documents. Website
Intuition
INTUITION is a Network Of Excellence focused on virtual reality and virtual environments applications for future workspaces. It is funded by the European Union, and operates under the 6th Framework of the European Commission (IST). The Network includes 58 partners and it is being coordinated by the Institute Of Communication And Computer Systems of the National Technical University of Athens in Greece. Website
ARARAT (Charles Woodward)
Augmented Reality applications for architecural design were developed in the ARARAT project, launced between VTT, TEKES and ten Finnish architecture/construction companies in 2004. The work in the ARARAT project included developing the mobile AR visualisation system to new platforms and devices, augmenting of virtual scale models, as well as development of new solutions for augmented interior design. PDF Brochure
INMOVE (Seppo Valli)
The VTT coordinated INMOVE project (Intelligent mobile video environment, IST 2001-37422) designed a software toolkit which enables the provision of a new range of intelligent video based services to end users in various mobile/wireless networks. INMOVE project started at the beginning of September 2002 and was completed August 2004. Website
PB-AmI (Sanni Siltanen)
PB-AmI (Physical Browsing For Ambient Intelligence). The main purpose is to develop, demonstrate and evaluate physical browsing paradigm and generic user interface paradigm to be used with mobile terminals (smart phones and PDAs) in ubiquitous digital environment. Physical browsing demonstration application using optical browsing was implemented with camera phone, using 2D barcodes as Visual Tags. Mobile phone automaticly detects the code and reads the information, and acts according to it. Project started 2004 and will continue until end of 2005. Concept Diagram
SymBall (Charles Woodward)
In the project a mobile game called SymBall was developed. The game allows two player wireless table tennis using camera phones as rackets. The application was developed for Symbian OS/Series 60 and it offers totally new user interface concept - instead of joystick or keyboard the game is controlled by physically moving your phone. This movement is detected by analysing the movement detected in the phone's camera. PDF Poster