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

磁场可视化对许多技术工作人员来说都是必不可少的。虽然场是K-14 STEM教育的核心概念，但磁场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，帮助学习者概念化磁场。这项拟议中的技术将使用户能够使用智能手机或平板电脑实时和3d地可视化日常物体周围磁场的形状、大小和方向。很少有负担得起的技术解决方案可以解决学生在领域上的困难，或者通过3d可视化来支持教学改进。这项创新的技术开发和教育研究旨在通过提供一种易于使用、易于使用、低成本的磁场可视化工具来解决这一问题，该工具将支持引导和非引导探索，并支持学习者在其环境中理解磁场相互作用的能力。最终，这个项目将生产低成本的可视化工具，智能手机用户可以随时随地使用，在他们的环境或工作场所可视化磁场。研究人员和教育软件开发人员将设计和创建一种新的软件教育工具，以及基于数据可视化的开发人员资源。该软件将利用最近推出的AR框架的新功能，根据惯性传感器单元（包括加速度计和陀螺仪）和摄像头确定移动设备的物理位置。然后，它将基于磁力计的磁场信息覆盖在屏幕上。当用户“扫描”磁场源周围的空间时，只需在物理区域周围移动移动设备，就可以收集磁场数据。绝大多数现有的AR软件资源利用工具将图像叠加到主要的2-D世界上，需要使用图像目标，并且将娱乐作为主要目标，而不是教育。提出的教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，以及与现场数据采集和3d可视化相关的挑战。研究人员将研究这个新工具将如何支持领域的教学，这对于初学者来说是一个非常困难的话题，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中进行用户测试和观察。将开发一个磁场概念清单，并用于衡量学生在概念一致性方面的收获。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值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.