Games Alfresco

Oliver Bimber (Bauhaus University – Weimar) one of the world’s leaders is spatial augmented reality kicks off with barb: “unlike other sessions, this session is NOT about mobile augmented reality but rather – spatial (projected) augmented reality. Welcome  to the wonderful world of Oliver Bimber.
He projects visuals on every day surfaces, by using structured light and camera feedback.
Oliver amazes by demonstrating a projection on…a glass of wine – using inverted lighting.
Adaptive photometric: Have you ever seen Shrek projected on a stone wall? Oliver makes it look easy with a smooth resulting image.
Another demonstration shows how you can record footage that would usually require a green screen – in the scene itself, with no need to go to a dedicated studio.
Oliver keeps going with Reverse Radiosity and Multi Focal Projection. You have to see it (because I can’t put it in words…)

On to more applications: visualization of radiological images – x ray film, diagnostic monitors, and high quality paper prints – aren’t optimal for diagnostics because of its low contrast.
Super Imposing Dynamic Range (demonstrated at ISMAR ’08.) offers 6 times higher contrast than x ray film.
Radiologists have confirmed that this technique does better than existing techniques.
Another application is for Light Microscopy. Contrast is a problem is shiny surfaces in operations or manufacturing scenarios. Oliver shows a prototype of projected light microscopy – with a size of 2 micro meters that increases the contrast by a factor of 5 and removes the background noise on a more uniform illumination – and this is just the beginning.  This is important for applications of image analysis.

Now why the mysterious title?
Simply because with Oliver’s techniques, contrast is improved by 4 orders of magnitude…

Question from the audience – why not use laser projectors?
Oliver responds that the issue is not within the projector but mostly on the surface – so even with laser projectors you’ll need the compensation discussed.

After lunch – demos!

Filed under: AR Engines, AR Events | Tagged: Oliver Bimber, Projected AR, Spatial AR |