AntARctica: An Immersive 3D Look into Antarctica's Ice Using Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality

In glaciology, ice-penetrating radar provides detailed cross-sectional images, called radargrams, through the ice that are used to measure ice structure, analyze ice-sheet flow, and reconstruct ice-sheet history. For computational ease, these radargrams are often reduced to text files of ice thicknesses, layer depths, and other measurements digitized from visible elements within the image. While useful for scientific analysis, the digitized data contain only a small fraction of the information contained in the radargrams, and users still refer to the original images to fully understand measurements. Producing and interpreting these digitized measurements is also hampered by the loss of geospatial context and orientation that occurs when viewing images one by one on a flat screen. However, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) offer a unique opportunity to enhance our understanding of ice-sheet structure and behavior by providing users with a 3D immersive environment for data visualization and analysis.

We present an AR/VR application, AntARctica, that allows users to explore numerous radargrams collected across the Ross Ice Shelf, preserving proper 3D orientation and georeferencing. We include surface and bathymetry DEMs as well as satellite imagery datasets for geospatial context in order to facilitate more informed interpretation of radargrams. The user can explore the aforementioned digitized datasets derived from radargrams, as well as perform their own digitization in the AR/VR environment. This can support a more refined interpretation, as users are able to see multiple images at a time, walk around the data, and interact with it. Current interactions in AntARctica include translation, rotation, and scaling of objects in the Antarctic Polar Stereographic Projection, allowing users to begin connecting observations to physical processes in real-world coordinates and appropriate units. We deploy the application on the Microsoft HoloLens 2 (AR) and Oculus Quest 2 (VR), and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses for data analysis. Although AR and VR are not yet commonplace tools for earth science analysis, our application shows promise for their potential adoption in the future.