Games Alfresco

It’s getting late in the second day of ISMAR ’08 and things are heating up…the current session is about my favorite topic: Augmented Reality applications.

Unfortunately, I missed the first talk (had a brilliant interview with Mark Bullinghurst) by Raphael Grasset about the Design of a Mixed-Reality Book: Is It Still a Real Book?

I will do my best to catch up.

Next, Tsutomu Miyashita and Peter Meier (Metaio) are on stage to present an exciting project that games alfresco covered in our Museum roundup: An Augmented Reality Museum Guide a result of a partnership between Louvre-DNP Museum lab and Metaio.

Miyashita introduces the project and describes the two main principles of this application are Works appreciation and guidance.

Peter describes the technology requirements:

• guide the user through the exhibition and provide added value to the exhibitions
• integrate with an audio guide service
• no markers or large area trackin – only optical and mobile trackers

Technology used was Metaio’s Unifeye SDK, with a special program developed for the museum guide. Additional standard tools (such as Maia) were used for the modeling. All the 3d models were loaded on the mobile device. The location recognition was performed based on the approach introduced by Reitmayr and Drummond: Robust model based outdoor augmented reality (ISMAR 2006)

600 people experienced the “work appreciation” and 300 people the guidance application.

The visitors responses ranged from “what’s going on?” to “this is amazing!”.

In web terms, the AR application created a higher level of “stickiness”. Users came back to see the art work and many took pictures of the exhibits. The computer graphics definitely captured the attention of users. It especially appealed to young visitors.

The guidance application got high marks : ” I knew where I had to go”, but on the flip side, the device was too heavy…

In conclusion, in this broad exposure of augmented reality to a wide audience, the reaction was mostly positive. it was a “good” surprise from the new experience. Because this technology is so new to visitors, there is a need to keep making it more and more intuitive.

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Third and last for this session is John Quarles discussing A Mixed Reality System for Enabling Collocated After Action Review (AAMVID)

Augmented reality is a great too for Training.

Case in point: Anesthesia education – keeping the patient asleep through anesthetic substance.

How cold we use AR to help educate the students on this task?

After action review is used in the military for ages: discussing after performing a task what happened? how did I do? what can I do better?

AR can provide two functions: review a fault test + provide directed instruction repetition.

With playback controls on a magic lens, the student can review her own actions, see the expert actions in the same situation, while viewing extra information about how the machine works (e.g. flow of liquids in tubes) – which is essentially real time abstract simulation of the machine.

The result of a study with testers showed that users prefer Expert Tutorial Mode which collocates expert log with realtime interaction.

Educators, on the other hand, can Identify trends in the class and modify the course accordingly.
Using “Gaze mapping” the educator can see where many students are pointing their magic lens and unearth an issue that requires a different teaching method. In addition, educators can see statistics of student interactions.

Did students prefer the “magic lens” or a desktop?

Desktop was good for personal review (afterward) which the Magic lens was better for external review.

The conclusion is that an after action review using AR works. Plus it’s a novel assessment tool for educators.

And the punch line: John Quarles would have killed to have such an After action review to help him practice for this talk…:-)

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From ISMAR ’08 Program:

Applications

• Design of a Mixed-Reality Book: Is It Still a Real Book?
  Raphael Grasset, Andreas Duenser, Mark Billinghurst
• An Augmented Reality Museum Guide
  Tsutomu Miyashita, Peter Georg Meier, Tomoya Tachikawa, Stephanie Orlic, Tobias Eble, Volker Scholz, Andreas Gapel, Oliver Gerl, Stanimir Arnaudov, Sebastian Lieberknecht
• A Mixed Reality System for Enabling Collocated After Action Review
  John Quarles, Samsun Lampotang, Ira Fischler, Paul Fishwick, Benjamin Lok

Filed under: AR Applications, AR Events | Tagged: Andreas Duenser, Andreas Gapel, Augmented Reality Museum Guide, augmented reality museum tours, Benjamin Lok, Ira Fischler, ISMAR 08, John Quarles, Mark Billinghurst, Metaio, Mixed-Reality Book, Oliver Gerl, Paul Fishwick, Peter Meier, Raphael Grasset, Samsun Lampotang, Sebastian Lieberknecht, Stanimir Arnaudov, Stephanie Orlic, Tobias Eble, Tomoya Tachikawa, Tsutomu Miyashita, Volker Scholz |