High-fidelity rendering of physical colour references for projected-based spatial augmented reality design applications

Spatial Augmented Reality allows users to visualise information onto physical objects by projecting digital contents on them. Product design applications could profitably exploit this feature to create prototypes partially real and partially virtual (mixed prototypes) to be used for the evaluation of products during the development processes. A mixed prototype needs a high visual quality, because design decisions are taken on the base of its aspect, and projected colours should match the colour standards (e.g. Pantone, RAL, etc.) to be able to rely on the visualised colours. The current paper analyzes the effect of a colour calibration method, based on the iteration of comparison and compensation phases, onto the projected images using objective measurements and subjective users’ evaluations. The procedure, whose effectiveness is verified thanks to the presented results, allows to replicate any colour available inside the projector gamut by simply using a physical sample.