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Abstract—Augmented reality brings components of the digital world into a person's perception of the real world. Mcommerce is constantly changing and those wanting to get ahead in the market need to have their finger on the pulse. More than half number of shoppers abandon their carts before completing a purchase or return a particular product saying that it was not as expected. This indicates that retailers need to do a lot more to convince customers to follow through with their choice and purchase items online. Augmented reality has the potential to reshape the world of retail.
The Augmented Reality Application or Home Shopping will help users to get a better view of the product by providing it’s virtual representation. It gives the user a mocked-up version of how their home could look when fitted out with various items or products. The major problems that Mcommerce sites face is user’s feedback that the product was not as expected. The entire scene that users see is a virtually generated version of a home, and the immersive experience allows them to become spatially aware of how various products would appear. The current market works on Marker-based Tracking which hampers the true value of Augmented Reality. The proposed idea provides an idea of using Markerless Tracking which is more efficient and requires less effort from user’s side as compared to Marker-based Tracking.
Augmented Reality is a technology which helps to enhance the real-world environment by providing Virtual elements, sound effects and any other form of visual stimuli. The basic advantage of using AR is that it enhances the features of the real-world environment. This helps in understanding the real-world environment in a better way by boosting users imaginative skills. AR provides a better insight of the real world which can help the retailers to a greater extent. The retailers can understand customers buying pattern, habits, etc., and then provide better visualization to the customers of the products they intend to buy. AR works by changing the physical world by adding superimposing computer-generated images. The computer-generated images are 3D models which are dropped onto the physical view of the environment. This superimposing of images on the physical view can be done using either of the 4 types of AR. These 4 types are:
These virtual images must be tracked on the physical view and the view must be rendered continuously. The major tracking techniques are marker-based tracking and marker-less tracking. The main disadvantage of marker-based tracking is that it requires a special visual object on which the virtual images are superimposed. This visual object can be anything from QR code to special signs. This visual object acts as a marker. The camera then scans this marker and calculates the position and orientation to drop the virtual image on the view. Considering an online shopping application, it is not always convenient for the user to carry a marker to view a particular product. This is where markerless tracking comes into view. Markerless tracking does not require a marker rather it calculates the desired parameters based on users current location. Markerless tracking uses SLAM - simultaneous location and mapping.
AR can be developed on various platforms like Unity, Blender, etc. Many SDK’s are available to make the possible usage out of AR. The best SDK’s that are currently available in the market are Wikitude, Vuforia, Kundan, ARToolkit, Apple ARKit and many more. Each SDK has its own way of using AR applications. Based on our research, we are using Unity Engine and Vuforia SDK for our applications implementation. Vuforia is one of the best SDK available which is free and is available for both Android and iOS. Also, the basic features required for our application, i.e., 3D object tracking, GPS, cloud storage and compatibility with Unity Engine are satisfied by this SDK. So, considering all the alternatives, this the best choice for our particular application.