Tutorial: Developing Situated Analytics Applications with RagRug

Description

RagRug is the first open-source toolkit dedicated to situated analytics. The abilities of RagRug go beyond previous immersive analytics toolkits by focusing on specific requirement emerging when using augmented reality rather than virtual reality. RagRug lets users create visualizations that are (a) embedded with referents (specific physical objecs in the environment) and (b) reactive to changes in the real world (both physical changes and changes in the data related to the referents). These capabilities are enabled by an easy-to-learn programming model ("event-driven functional reactive programming") on top of the Unity game engine, the Node-RED framework for internet of things, and the Javascript programming language. RagRag ensures these tried-and-tested components work seamlessly together and delivers visualizations that are both expressive and easy to use. It is important to note that RagRug does not break new ground in terms of the visualizations it can create; instead, it breaks new ground in how it integrates visualizations with referents. This ability comes from RagRug's support for modeling both spatial and semantic properties of referents, and for its support of IoT sensors.

The modeling can be performed using a variety tools, such as CAD modeling or 3D scanning. The results are placed in one or more database back-ends, in such a way that an AR client application can query relevant data using the user's current location or task description to formulate a meaningful query and retrieve relevant data on the fly without prior configuration of the AR client.

The visualization capabilities of RagRug build on the state of the art in immersive analytics, but it extends it towards allowing real-time reactions to data streaming from sensors observing changes in the environment. If new data comes in from the sensors, the situated visualization changes automatically. Programmers do not have to worry about the "how", the can concentrate on the "what" of situated visualization.

Period	12 Mar 2022
Event title	IEEE Virtual Reality 2022: IEEE VR 2022
Event type	Conference
Location	VirtualShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International