Methods and systems for determining the pose of a camera with respect to at least one object of a real environment

A method for superimposing a virtual model with a real environment for use in an authoring or augmented reality application, comprising:

• providing a first image comprising at least one image by at least one camera capturing a real object of a real environment;
• generating first orientation data describing a normal to a 3D plane within a reference coordinate system from at least one orientation sensor associated with the at least one camera or from an algorithm which analyses the first image to find and determine features which are indicative of an orientation of the at least one camera;
• placing a virtual model at a first position within the reference coordinate system, wherein the virtual model represents a known sized object;
• providing a second image by the at least one camera that captures the real object of the real environment;
• determining first position data indicative of at least one distance between the at least one camera and the 3D plane within the reference coordinate system from at least one distance sensor associated with the at least one camera or from an algorithm which analyses the first and second images to find and determine features which are indicative of an distance of the at least one camera;
• shooting at least one ray from the camera center of the at least one camera at the position where the first image is captured to at least one point of the virtual model placed at the first position;
• intersecting the at least one ray with the 3D plane to obtain at least one intersection point;
• displaying the virtual model superimposed with the real environment in the second image such that the at least one point of the virtual model is superimposed with the corresponding at least one intersection point the virtual object such that the point is superimposed with the intersection point in the second image.

A system for superimposing a virtual model with a real environment for use in an authoring or augmented reality application, comprising a processing device coupled with at least one camera, wherein the processing device is configured to:

• provide a first image comprising at least one image provided by the at least one camera capturing a real object of a real environment;
• generate first orientation data describing a normal to a 3D plane within a reference coordinate system provided from at least one orientation sensor associated with the at least one camera or from an algorithm which analyses the first image to find and determine features which are indicative of an orientation of the at least one camera;
• place a virtual model at a first position within the reference coordinate system, wherein the virtual model represents a known sized object;
• provide a second image by the at least one camera that captures the real object of the real environment;
• determine first position data indicative of at least one distance between the at least one camera and the 3D plane within the reference coordinate system provided from at least one distance sensor associated with the at least one camera or from an algorithm which analyses the first and second images to find and determine features which are indicative of an distance of the at least one camera;
• move the virtual model to be positioned on the 3D plane defined by the first orientation data and the first position data, wherein the virtual model is moved to a second position within the reference coordinate system accordingly;
• modify a dimension of the virtual model such that a first image projection of the virtual object in the first image in accordance with the first position of the virtual object substantially equals a second image projection of the modified virtual object in the first image in accordance with the second position of the virtual object and the modified dimension;
• and
• display the modified virtual model superimposed with the real environment in at least one image captured by the at least one camera.