An important message from Mark Billinghurst about ArToolKit:hirokazu
On Tuesday March 17th, Hirokazu Kato recevied the 2009 IEEE VGTC
Virtual Reality Technical Achievement Award for his development of the
ARToolKit tracking library. This was given at the IEEE VR 2009
conference, the premier academic conference for virtual reality. The
VR Technical Achievement Award is a great honor and has only been
given out five times before, to such people as the inventors of the
CAVE immersive VR system.
For Hirokazu Kato this is well deserved because, although it was
developed ten years ago, ARToolKit is still the dominant computer
vision based AR tracking library with over 170,000 downloads. Almost
all of the researchers in the AR field have used ARToolKit in one way
or other, and many of the AR applications in the field have roots that
can be traced back to ARToolKit. As a result of his work, AR
researchers and developers didn’t need to build tracking code, but
instead could focus on AR application development and interface
design. The community owes a huge debt of gratitude to Hiro and it’s
great to see that his achievement has been recognized.
The full announcement.
Filed under: AR Engines | Tagged: artoolkit, Hirokazu Kato |
Games Alfresco 
Well deserved, he is certainly the Hiro of AR*.
*really,really really sorry for that obvious pun, I have no willpower whatsoever.
Sounds like an award that is well deserved for this person. It appears that everyone involved in Virtual Reality owes him a debt of gratitude.