Augmented reality and pose estimation

Augmented reality (AR) is a concept coined in the early 1990s by Tom Caudell. He proposed AR as a mix between real-world rendering from a camera and computer generated graphics that smoothly blend together to create the illusion of virtual objects existing in the real world. In the past few decades, AR has made great strides, from an eccentric technology with very few real applications, to a multi-billion industry in many verticals: defense, manufacturing, healthcare, entertainment, and more. However, the core concept remains the same (in camera-based AR): register graphics on top of 3D geometry in the scene. Thus, AR has ultimately been about 3D geometry reconstruction from images, tracking this geometry, and 3D graphics rendering registered to the geometry. Other types of augmented reality use different sensors than the camera. One of the most well known examples is AR performed with the gyroscope and compass on a mobile phone, such as in the Pokemon...