Название: Covert Communication in the Meta Era: Blending Steganography with Augmented Reality and Artificial Intelligence
Автор: Leila Benarous, Abderrazak Benarous
Издательство: CRC Press
Год: 2027
Страниц: 101
Язык: английский
Формат: pdf (true), epub
Размер: 10.1 MB

In a world increasingly shaped by intelligent and immersive technologies, Augmented Reality (AR) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) are redefining how we interact with digital information. This book explores how these powerful tools can be combined with advanced security techniques to create applications that are not only interactive but also secure and discreet.

Bridging theory and practice, the book provides a comprehensive introduction to AR, AI, steganography, and cryptography, guiding readers through their foundations and real-world applications. It examines the evolution of AR technologies and their distinction from virtual and mixed reality, while also presenting key AI concepts with a focus on object detection using modern models such as YOLOv8. The text further explores the principles of steganography and cryptography, highlighting their roles in protecting sensitive information. These concepts are then brought together in the design and development of a dual-purpose augmented reality application. Using Unity and the Vuforia SDK, alongside a custom-trained AI model, the application demonstrates both object recognition for general users and a covert communication system for secure data exchange.

Before we see the development process, it is essential to set up the Unity environment to support backend integration. This includes installing necessary plugins thatwe will be mentioning in the coming sections, setting up project dependencies, and configuring the development environment to handle backend services effectively. Originally, Unity is a multi-platform game engine created by Unity Technologies. It was initially announced in June 2005 at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference as a Mac OS X game engine. It supports a wide range of platforms, including desktop, mobile, console and virtual reality environments. Knowing that we will use object detection models from within it later, we made sure to install the latest stable version of Unity to ensure its functioning and to avoid compatibility problems with plugin versions we use. Subsequently, we structured our created project as follows:
• Script folder: It contains C# scripts that are used to ensure UI interactivity and functionality, and to ensure smooth integration of AI model into Unity.
• Animation folder: It contains animation controllers for all buttons.
• Graphics folder: It contains UI elements such as a background sprite (sprites are 2D graphic objects used for characters, props, projectiles and other elements of 2D gameplay) and the application’s logo. All of which are used to create the frontend that we demonstrate in the next chapter.
• SQL folder: It contains C#-MySQL driver for connection to database.

Following, we install the Sentis plugin, which is a framework for importing and running third-party AI models through the Unity Runtime on user devices in other words, it is a neural network inference library for Unity. The version used in developing our AR application is 1.3.0 pre-release. We also setup our database in this phase; the database is currently composed of one table that stores the ten selected objects and their corresponding brief description. It is hosted locally using XAMPP server and interrogated directly from our Stego-AR app using SQL queries from within specified C# script. It will be expanded in the future with user accounts and subscriptions.

By integrating multiple cutting-edge technologies into a single cohesive framework, this book offers a unique contribution to the field. It is particularly valuable for students, researchers, and professionals seeking practical guidance and innovative approaches to building intelligent, secure AR systems in today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape.

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