A lighter and more open augmented reality concept brings AR technology within everyone’s reach while accelerating the field’s development.
Developed at the University of Eastern Finland, OpenAR-M is the latest model in the open-source OpenAR series. The new glasses are lighter and more compact than previous versions and have been designed specifically for research and educational use. Structurally, they resemble regular eyeglasses but contain fully functional augmented reality optics and electronics.
In the spirit of openness
From the very beginning, the goal of the OpenAR series has been to make augmented reality more open and accessible. OpenAR-M continues this approach by combining optics, electronics and 3D-printed parts into a single unit that anyone can build using the instructions available on the project website.
Bernard Kress, former President of the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) and currently Director of XR Engineering at Google, praises the project for democratising AR development. Kress highlights the value of openness, particularly in education:
“The OpenAR initiative was born from the need to democratise augmented reality developments, allowing any AR enthusiast to come up with novel AR use case implementations rather than having to first focus on costly hardware and software platforms.
OpenAR-M aims to achieve an open hardware and software platform that not only makes AR accessible to researchers and educators worldwide but, crucially, accelerates the entire field's development by putting the building blocks directly into their hands”.
Professor Jyrki Saarinen, Head of the Department of Physics and Mathematics at the University of Eastern Finland concurs:
“OpenAR is an excellent example of how cutting-edge photonics can be made accessible to everyone through the principles of openness and accessibility,” he says.
Simple and efficient optical design
OpenAR-M projects an image into the user’s right eye using a mirror, a lens and a reflective glass plate. The image appears naturally suspended in the field of view and is optically focused at infinity – as if looking at the horizon. This makes viewing comfortable and reduces eye strain.
The first application version includes a temperature and humidity sensor that displays measurements directly in the field of view. Thanks to its modular design, the sensor unit can easily be replaced with other modules, such as air quality or pulse measurement. The range of possible applications is limited only by imagination.
According to Bernard Kress, OpenAR helps users grasp the core principles of AR technology:
“The core ingenuity of OpenAR-M lies in its simple, effective optical design. By focusing the image to infinity using just a mirror, a lens and one or two partially reflective glass plates, it delivers a naturally comfortable viewing experience as a bi-ocular AR display. This clear, elegant optical pathway makes it an exceptional learning tool, perfectly suited for students and researchers keen to understand how AR hardware truly works, and allow them to focus on creating new exciting use cases with whatever hardware or sensors they would like to use, thanks to the flexibility, simplicity and affordability of the Arduino ecosystem”.
Technology for education and research
OpenAR-M is built on the Arduino Pro Mini development platform, and all its components are easily available through online retailers and local suppliers. The 3D models, software, and assembly instructions have been released openly, enabling use in physics, electronics and optics education.
All OpenAR-M materials are freely available on the OpenAR website. The 3D models are licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0, and the software under the Apache 2.0 license.
More information and build instructions
For further information, please contact:
Professor Jyrki Saarinen, [email protected]
