TeAPOT: Smartphone-Assisted Terrain-Aligned Geospatial Registration for Head-Mounted Mixed Reality in Outdoor Environments

Research output: Contribution to journal › Research article › Contributed › peer-review

Abstract

Some outdoor mixed reality (MR) applications, such as exploratory visualization of smoothly varying environmental fields, tolerate meter-scale global placement error but still require spatially extended overlays to conform to the local terrain. However, standalone MR headsets often lack Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers and magnetometers, and flat-ground assumptions can cause overlays to float above or intersect uneven terrain. We present TeAPOT (Terrain-Aligned Positioning and Orientation Toolkit), which transfers smartphone GNSS position and true heading to a headset through fiducial alignment, then reconstructs a local 2.5D terrain patch on the headset from stereo environment-depth observations for terrain-aligned rendering. Across 150 outdoor trials at three locations and standing distances up to 10m, TeAPOT achieved a median end-to-end horizontal placement error of 2.04m (P95 = 5.52m), with end-to-end error strongly correlated with the corresponding standing-position error. A separate 60-session characterization yielded a median absolute true-heading error of 4.08° (P95 = 8.19°), consistent with the observed increase in added error at larger standing distances. For local terrain reconstruction, 30 reconstructions of 1×1m patches across three terrain types yielded a median absolute height error of 0.6cm (P95 = 1.1cm) relative to reference scans of the same patches. The median time to stability was 1.1s, and the median GPU time was 5.6ms. These results demonstrate meter-tolerant outdoor MR on commodity hardware, combining meter-scale absolute placement with centimeter-level local surface-shape accuracy.

Details

Original languageEnglish
Number of pages11
JournalIEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics
Volume32
Issue number11
Publication statusE-pub ahead of print - 27 Oct 2026
Peer-reviewedYes

Conference

Title25th IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality
Abbreviated titleISMAR 2026
Conference number25
Duration5 - 9 October 2026
Website
Degree of recognitionInternational event
LocationThe Nicolaus Hotel
CityBari
CountryItaly

Keywords

Keywords

  • Geospatial mixed reality, Outdoor mixed reality, Spatial alignment, Positioning and orientation, Terrain reconstruction