Augmented reality and its many related application areas (industry, video games, print media, commerce, etc.) have become part of everyday life.
Portalp, a French manufacturer of automatic pedestrian doors, has always been innovation-driven. Seeking to offer a new sales support tool and an immersive experience for its customers, the company selected AVISTO, an ADVANS Group company, to develop an application integrating augmented reality. By creating a link between the real world and the virtual world, this application is a first in the automatic door industry.
Portalp customers can now visualize their future entrance on a smartphone or tablet, with an automatic door seamlessly integrated into their building’s façade.
Developing an augmented reality application
Portalp wanted an application capable of:
- Integrating an automatic door onto a building façade in real time
- Selecting a door model
- Viewing a near-photorealistic rendering of an automatic door project
- Accessing features to customize the entrance door (model, opening direction, dimensions, orientation, color)
- Opening and closing the virtual door
- Capturing an image and enabling finer adjustments in the back office
- Managing multiple projects by folder and sharing them, for example by email
During the project, AVISTO addressed the following technical challenges.
Definition and tracking of the door installation area:
- Use of the Vuforia™ library (Qualcomm®)
- Integration using the NDK (Native Development Kit)
- Interfacing via JNI (Java Native Interface)
Realistic 3D rendering of automatic doors:
- Conversion of SolidWorks objects to Wavefront format
- Implementation of a 3D engine using OpenGL ES 2.0
- Use of materials and lighting for 3D objects through shaders
Full use of the Android framework:
- Application components: Intents, Activities, Fragments, Loaders, Content Providers, etc.
- User interface: ActionBar, ListView, GridView, ViewPager, Dialogs, Toasts, etc.
- Storage: SQLite database, photo gallery
- Input devices: camera, gesture detection
“For quite some time, our sales teams were creating photo montages using makeshift solutions to illustrate how an automatic door would integrate into a customer’s or prospective customer’s façade… The idea of creating a configurator gradually took shape. Naturally, we first thought of smartphones for their mobility, then augmented reality to immerse our customers in a near-realistic rendering.
We contacted several companies, and the solution proposed by AVISTO appeared to be the most relevant.
It was a highly anticipated tool for our sales teams, easy to use and extremely helpful in supporting their proposals. The application will clearly add value to their interactions with customers. The application, named ‘Portalp Live’, is available in French and English for use across the entire Portalp network, including for export markets.
Portalp Live is available free of charge on the Android 4.0 platform and above. Further developments are planned over time, with the rollout of multiple ranges and models of automatic doors.
Alongside the ‘Portalp Live’ application, a second mobile application, ‘Portalp 360’, was developed by AVISTO. It is complementary and is intended as a showcase for our offering: presentation of our entire product range, news, and contact with the nearest representative via geolocation for advice, quotes, installation, or maintenance.
All of Portalp in your pocket: this is now a reality, and augmented reality adds even more impact to projects and inspires investment in automatic doors!”
Conclusion: an augmented experience serving the user
This solution demonstrates how augmented reality enhances interaction and simplifies visualization, offering an intuitive and effective approach to meeting user needs.
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