Mapping Fields in Augmented Reality with Personal Mobile Devices: Enhancing Visualization Skills for Education and Industry

磁场可视化对于技术工作者的许多分支来说都是必不可少的。虽然场是K-14 STEM教育中的一个核心概念，但磁相互作用的场模型往往传达得很差，经常被K-14教师和学生误解。该项目将显著提升个人移动设备的增强现实(AR)能力，以帮助学习者对磁场进行概念化。这项拟议的技术将使用户能够使用智能手机或平板电脑实时和3-D地显示日常物体周围磁场的形状、大小和方向。几乎没有负担得起的技术解决方案来解决学生在领域方面的困难，或者通过3-D可视化来支持教学改进。这一创新的技术开发和教育研究旨在通过提供广泛可访问、易于使用、低成本的磁场可视化工具来解决这一问题，该工具将支持有指导和无指导的探索，并支持学习者理解其环境中的磁场相互作用的能力。最终，该项目将生产出低成本的可视化工具，供智能手机用户随时随地使用，以可视化他们环境或工作场所的磁场。研究人员和教育软件开发人员将设计和创建一个新的软件教育工具以及基于数据的可视化开发人员资源。该软件将利用最近推出的AR框架的新功能，根据包括加速计和陀螺仪在内的惯性传感器单元以及相机来确定移动设备的物理位置。然后，它在屏幕上覆盖基于磁强计的场信息。当用户只需在物理区域内移动移动设备，即可在场源周围的空间中“扫过”时，将收集磁场数据。绝大多数现有的增强现实软件资源利用工具将图像叠加到一个主要是2-D的世界上，需要使用图像目标，并将重点放在娱乐而不是教育上。拟议的教与学应用程序的开发将致力于解决开发人员在运动跟踪、环境理解和光线估计方面的技术挑战，以及与现场数据获取和3-D可视化相关的挑战。研究人员将研究这一新工具将如何支持领域的教和学，对于入门学习者来说，这是一个出了名的困难话题，因为它依赖于理论理解和3-D可视化。在开发过程中，将在高中和大学物理教室进行用户测试和观察。将开发一份磁场概念清单，并用来衡量学生在概念一致性方面的收获。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Magnetic field visualizations are essential to many branches of the technology workforce. While fields are a core concept in K-14 STEM education, the field model of magnetic interactions is often poorly conveyed and regularly misunderstood by K-14 teachers and students alike. This project will significantly advance the augmented reality (AR) capabilities of personal mobile devices to help learners conceptualize magnetic fields. The proposed technology will enable users to use smartphones or tablets to visualize in real time and 3-D, the shape, magnitude and direction of magnetic fields around everyday objects. Few affordable technological solutions exist to address students' difficulties with fields or to support instructional improvements with 3-D visualization. This innovative technology development and educational research aims to address this issue by providing a broadly accessible, easy to-use, low cost magnetic field visualization tool that will enable both guided and unguided exploration, and support the learner's ability to make sense of magnetic field interactions in their environment. Ultimately, this project will produce low-cost visualization tools that will be available to smartphone users for use anytime, anywhere to visualize the magnetic fields in their environment or workplace. Researchers and educational software developers will design and create a new software educational tool as well as developer resources for data-based visualization. The software will utilize the new capabilities of recently-introduced AR frameworks to determine physical location of the mobile device based upon both the inertial sensor unit including accelerometer and gyroscope, and the camera. It then overlays the screen with field information based upon the magnetometer. Magnetic field data will be collected as the user "sweeps" through space surrounding a field source by simply moving the mobile device around the physical area. The vast majority of pre-existing AR software resources utilize tools to superimpose images onto a primarily 2-D world, require the use of an image target, and focus on entertainment as the main goal, not education. The development of the proposed application for teaching and learning will work toward addressing technological challenges for developers in motion tracking, environmental understanding, and light estimation, as well as challenges associated with field data acquisition and 3-D visualization. The researchers will study how this new tool will support the teaching and learning of fields, a notoriously difficult topic for introductory learners given its reliance upon theoretical understanding and 3-D visualizations. User testing and observations in both high school and college physics classrooms will be carried out during the development process. A Magnetic Field Concept Inventory will be developed and used to measure student gains in conceptual coherence.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.