Augmented reality (AR) applications are increasingly being used in various fields (e.g., design, maintenance, assembly, repair, training, etc.), as AR techniques help improve efficiency and reduce costs. Moreover, collaborative AR systems extend applicability, allowing for collaborative environments for different roles. In this paper, we propose a multi-user collaborative AR system (aptly called the “multi-user collaborative system”, or MUCSys); it is composed of three ends—MUCStudio, MUCView, and MUCServer. MUCStudio aims to construct industrial content with CAD model transformation, simplification, database update, marker design, scene editing, and exportation, while MUCView contains sensor data analysis, real-time localization, scene loading, annotation editing, and virtual–real rendering. MUCServer—as the bridge between MUCStudio and MUCView—presents collaborative and database services. To achieve this, we implemented the algorithms of local map establishment, global map registration, optimization, and network synchronization. The system provides AR services for diverse industrial processes via three collaborative ways—remote support, collaborative annotation, and editing. According to the system, applications for cutting machines were presented to improve efficiency and reduce costs, covering cutting head designs, production line sales, and cutting machine inspections. Finally, a user study was performed to prove the usage experience of the system.

Photos taken in unconstrained tourist environments often present challenges for accurate 3D scene reconstruction due to variable appearances and transient occlusions, which can introduce artifacts in novel view synthesis. Recently, in-the-wild 3D scene reconstruction has been achieved realistic rendering with Neural Radiance Fields (NeRFs). With the advancement of 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS), some methods also attempt to reconstruct 3D scenes from unconstrained photo collections and achieve real-time rendering. However, the rapid convergence of 3DGS is misaligned with the slower convergence of neural network-based appearance encoder and transient mask predictor, hindering the reconstruction efficiency. To address this, we propose a novel sky-aware framework for scene reconstruction from unconstrained photo collection using 3DGS. Firstly, we observe that the learnable per-image transient mask predictor in previous work is unnecessary. By introducing a simple yet efficient greedy supervision strategy, we directly utilize the pseudo mask generated by a pretrained semantic segmentation network as the transient mask, thereby achieving more efficient and higher quality in-the-wild 3D scene reconstruction. Secondly, we find that separately estimating appearance embeddings for the sky and building significantly improves reconstruction efficiency and accuracy. We analyze the underlying reasons and introduce a neural sky module to generate diverse skies from latent sky embeddings extract from unconstrained images. Finally, we propose a mutual distillation learning strategy to constrain sky and building appearance embeddings within the same latent space, further enhancing reconstruction efficiency and quality. Extensive experiments on multiple datasets demonstrate that the proposed framework outperforms existing methods in novel view and appearance synthesis, offering superior rendering quality with faster convergence and rendering speed.

Visual localization and object detection both play important roles in various tasks. In many indoor application scenarios where some detected objects have fixed positions, the two techniques work closely together. However, few researchers consider these two tasks simultaneously, because of a lack of datasets and the little attention paid to such environments. In this paper, we explore multi-task network design and joint refinement of detection and localization. To address the dataset problem, we construct a medium indoor scene of an aviation exhibition hall through a semi-automatic process. The dataset provides localization and detection information, and is publicly available at https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1U28zkuN4_I0dbzkqyIAKlAl5k9oUK0jI?usp=sharing for benchmarking localization and object detection tasks. Targeting this dataset, we have designed a multi-task network, JLDNet, based on YOLO v3, that outputs a target point cloud and object bounding boxes. For dynamic environments, the detection branch also promotes the perception of dynamics. JLDNet includes image feature learning, point feature learning, feature fusion, detection construction, and point cloud regression. Moreover, object-level bundle adjustment is used to further improve localization and detection accuracy. To test JLDNet and compare it to other methods, we have conducted experiments on 7 static scenes, our constructed dataset, and the dynamic TUM RGB-D and Bonn datasets. Our results show state-of-the-art accuracy for both tasks, and the benefit of jointly working on both tasks is demonstrated.