Building Interoperable Location-Based Augmented Reality with the Open AR Cloud

UBICOMP ISWC 2025

Sunday, Oct. 12, 14:30–18:00 (EEST)

Aalto University (Undergraduate Centre), Finland

Room: U7

Gain knowledge about the technology stack of a spatial web required for interoperable publishing, discovery and consumption of content anchored to a 'digital twin' of real-world locations and how it relates to other technologies such as 5G, edge computing and smart sensors.

The schedule is planned for 3.5 hours (including a coffee break) with the following sessions.

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Tutorial Abstract

This tutorial provides an overview of location-based augmented reality (AR), the AR cloud, and the spatial Web. We present the required technological building blocks, use cases, the ecosystem, and challenges related to the lack of interoperability between proprietary solutions.

The Open AR Cloud association promotes an open spatial Web and develops open-source components to achieve this goal. Participants of this tutorial will learn about these open components and gain access to a toolset for building their own augmented reality experiences anchored to the real world.

Session Schedule

Welcome & Introduction (5 min)

Welcome from the organisers. (Gabor Soros, Alina Kadlubsky)

Spatial Web Basics (10 min)

Vision, state of the art, applications, challenges. (Jan-Erik Vinje)

GeoPose (15 min)

Pose reference systems, the OGC GeoPose standard for a universal shared reference frame between different AR clouds. (Gabor Soros)

An Open Spatial Computing Platform Introduction (10 min)

Required technological building blocks, overview of the Open AR Cloud.

Visual Positioning (45 min)

Visual positioning systems (VPS), technology principles, example walkthrough of creating a 3D point cloud map of a real-world location. OARC GeoPose Protocol for interoperability between various VPS-es. We will showcase interoperability between the solutions of Immersal and Augmented City, as well as Nokia's OpenVPS.

Globe Viewer and POI Service (15 min)

A Cesium-based visualiser that uses Google Earth's models for buildings, terrain and surface of the globe. (Gabor Soros)

Coffee Break (30 min)

Invite the audience to join us, showcasing the demo outside on the Aalto Campus.

Spatial Discovery and Platform Components (20 min)

We provide an overview of the platform and its components, spatial search and spatial discovery, content authoring, content placement, and positioning basics. (James Jackson)

Client-Side Development (40 min)

Introduction to the spARcl open source Web client, OSCP protocol integration (GeoPose, spatial content discovery, spatial search), AR content rendering and localized placement using the OSCP standards, live coding with the audience. (Mikel Salazar, Ali Hantal)

Live AR Demo (15 min)

Audience steps outside to experience a live demo featuring web and mobile spatial browsers. (Gabor Soros, Ali Hantal)

Summary & Closing (5 min)

Summary of the session. (Gabor Soros, Jan-Erik Vinje)

Presenters

Gabor Soros

Gabor Soros is a Senior Research Scientist at Nokia Bell Labs (Budapest, Hungary), co-founder of the Open AR Cloud Association, and contributor to the OGC GeoPose standard. Gabor's research focuses on visual positioning systems for augmented reality, and he has been instrumental in the development of the Open Spatial Computing Platform (OSCP). He is also an early contributor to 3 successful AR startups at ETH Zurich. Gabor holds a PhD from ETH Zurich in ubiquitous computing.

James Jackson

James Jackson is a Member of Technical Staff at AT&T Labs (Austin, TX, USA), Director of Technology and board member at Open AR Cloud, and co-chair of the Real/Virtual World Integration Working Group at the Metaverse Standards Forum. He has worked in telecom for the past 25 years, building large-scale real-time distributed systems and promoting innovation. James is especially interested in applications of machine perception that improve society, such as self-driving cars and an open interoperable Spatial Web. James received a BSEE from the University of Texas at Austin and an MSCS (AI/ML focus) from Georgia Tech.

Mikel Salazar

Mikel Salazar is a Human-Computer Interaction researcher focusing on the development of advanced 3D User Interfaces for Extended Reality systems. Currently, he is working at the Institute for Energy Technology (Halden, Norway). As the main developer of spARcl, one of the first open-source web-based AR browsers to integrate with an open spatial computing platform (OSCP), Mikel focuses on bridging the gap between research-grade tools and practical AR applications. Mikel holds a PhD from the University of the Basque Country (Spain) and is a Senior Research Scientist at Open AR Cloud.

Ali Hantal

Ali Hantal is a serial entrepreneur and passionate advocate for interoperability. He is the founder of XR Masters, Co-President of the Open AR Cloud Association, and Adoption Officer for the GeoPose Standards Working Group at the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC). With a deep commitment to education and emerging technologies, he focuses on advancing XR and spatial computing through open standards and global collaboration. His company, XR Masters, is a U.S.-based XR technology firm behind MyGeoVerse — a platform capable of publishing spatial content in compliance with OGC and OSCP standards. Powered by AR Cloud technology and conversational AI avatars, MyGeoVerse bridges the physical and digital worlds to deliver immersive, context-aware experiences across tourism, education, and retail.

Alina Kadlubsky

Alina Kadlubsky is a Research Associate at the Department of Virtual Technologies at the Applied Sciences University of Mittweida. She specialises in spatial computing and XR research, leveraging on creating a human-centric spatial computing ecosystem.

Jan-Erik Vinje

Jan-Erik Vinje is the Co-President of the Open AR Cloud Association.

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