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劳动力的许多分支都是必不可少的。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。该项目将显著推进个人移动的设备的增强现实（AR）功能，以帮助学习者概念化磁场。拟议中的技术将使用户能够使用智能手机或平板电脑以真实的时间和3-D方式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存在，以解决学生的困难与领域或支持教学改进与三维可视化。这种创新的技术开发和教育研究旨在通过提供一种广泛访问，易于使用，低成本的磁场可视化工具来解决这个问题，该工具将实现引导和无引导的探索，并支持学习者理解其环境中磁场相互作用的能力。最终，该项目将产生低成本的可视化工具，可供智能手机用户随时随地使用，以可视化其环境或工作场所中的磁场。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，根据包括加速度计和陀螺仪在内的惯性传感器单元以及相机来确定移动终端的物理位置。然后，它将基于磁力计的磁场信息覆盖在屏幕上。当用户通过简单地在物理区域周围移动移动终端来"扫描"场源周围的空间时，将收集磁场数据。绝大多数现有的AR软件资源利用工具将图像复制到主要的2D世界上，需要使用图像目标，并将娱乐作为主要目标，而不是教育。拟议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3-D可视化相关的挑战。研究人员将研究这种新工具将如何支持领域的教学和学习，这对于入门学习者来说是一个非常困难的话题，因为它依赖于理论理解和3D可视化。在高中和大学物理教室的用户测试和观察将在开发过程中进行。一个磁场概念清单将被开发并用于衡量学生在概念一致性方面的收获。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

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.