Using augmented reality interactive system to support digital electronics learning

Abstract

The fundamental theories and concepts of digital electronics which usually being taught at entry level electronics courses is designed to help the students develop solid underlying knowledge of how computer works. The topics usually covered Boolean algebra, Logic Gates and etc. Beside Theory, which are being taught in the lectures, practical skill is required by doing the experiments. In the past the digital electronics laboratory is needed for this purpose, but recently, it was replaced by the software that can simulate the digital circuits. The advantage of this software is that, the students can study the behavior of a systems without building them which save a lot of time and expense. The drawback of these simulators is that, it lacks real charisma in performing the experiments and difficult to interpret. In this research, we have applied interactive marker-based augmented reality (AR) to solve these problems. The advantage of using this marker based techniques in this research is that we can implant the functions of each logic gates in the marker and program these markers to interact with others just like in the real logic gates laboratory. The other advantage is that, markers can be in any shape or have any pictures or symbol on it which make user recognize them easily. In this research, we have created 9 markers which represent 7 basic Logic gates i.e. AND gate, OR gate, NOT gate, NAND gate, NOR gate, XOR gate and XNOR gate. Since we can implant the functions of each logic gates in the marker, the output from these markers will represent the function of each logic gate. By adding them together, the output will be the same as adding the logic gates together. The advantage of using this marker based AR techniques is that we can construct the digital circuit using these markers and the output will be just the same as using the real logic gates, except there is no need for power supply and can be done anywhere and anytime.