Researchers from the University of California Santa Barbara have a lofty goal on their minds – “Anywhere Augmentation”, which means augmenting arbitrary environments with little prior preparation. Or as they put it:
The main goal of this work is to lower the barrier of broad acceptance for augmented reality by expanding beyond research prototypes that only work in prepared, controlled environments.
Now, if have been following the world of augmented reality for the last year, you are probably familiar with the following situation. There’s some site offering an AR experience, but in order to access it, you have to print at least one black and white symbol. Unfortunately, the marker you have just printed last week, for another site, just doesn’t cut it. Each site requires its own marker, that becomes obsolete after two minutes. It’s a defining example of prior preparation in order to experience AR, and the researcher at UCSB as a plan to eliminate it.
Enters HandyAR. Instead of using a marker, Taehee Lee and Tobias Höllerer want to track your outstretched hand.
You can even have some minimal interaction with virtual objects, dragging and dropping them, by closing and opening your hand, as the following video shows:
Ain’t it cool? You can find much more information over here, where you can also download a binary (Windows) and source code (Visual Studio 2005) to play with.
(via @totalimmersion)
Metaio announces the coming release of Junaio, but doesn’t give much information about what Junaio really is.
And in other news:
Total Immersion now enters the world of soccer trading cards, at least in Italy.
You can get pregnant without the morning sickness via the wonders of Flash based AR.
The Virtec project is a thesis project using AR to teach about Aztec culture by means of a book and a head mounted display.
This week’s video revisits one of this blog’s reoccurring themes, the Transformers (previously here and here). This application comes with the Transformers coming DVD, or as this trailer puts it “Prepare for Augmented Reality! An exclusive 3D Holographic Experience!”:
Metaio, Inc. Will Launch Its Mobile Augmented Reality Platform junaio On November 2nd San Francisco, September 18th 2009 – Today, metaio officially announced the launch date of junaio, its mobile augmented reality platform. On November 2nd, the leading company in augmented reality will release a first version exclusively for the iPhone. More features will be released soon after, including capabilities on the Android and Symbian platforms. junaio will change the way we create, access and share information. By combining innovative online and mobile technologies, junaio will allow users to see location-based content through the display of a mobile device. Users can leave traces, messages or objects and visually interact with their friends or anyone else in the world. Already existing web services can be enhanced and completely new ways of interaction can be created. Whether it is social networks, multimedia content or game concepts – virtually anything can be embedded in the real world and connected to a certain place. “The possibilities are endless, we are taking the Internet outside to the real world,” says Thomas Alt, Chief Executive Officer of metaio. Seeing location-based multimedia content through the display of your mobile device is only one part of the story. “Mobile augmented reality is all about the user´s orientation. But to deliver a really useful and robust application, you have to be user oriented,” says Peter Meier, Chief Technology Officer. metaio is defining a new dimension in mobile augmented reality through incorporation of features that will allow better usability and social interaction. junaio is the result of more than six years application development in augmented reality and months of research and usability tests for mobile applications. So get ready for the ultimate Outernet experience!
For more information and updates, please refer to: www.junaio.com
That nice little creative work led Alliban to recently launch Augmatic, a company that provides augmented reality services, and yes, among them is a personalized augmented business card.
Of course, Alliban is not the only one in the augmented business-cards-business. We have previously featured Toxin Labs. This week sees another implementation, by one Burton Posey, which can only be described as cute (of course, you can choose a more menacing avatar):
Says Posey:
This is an idea I’d been kicking around in my head since February. I wanted to find a way that a company could deliver a catchy identity for themselves. Avatars, be it the Mii’s on the Nintendo Wii, or an Xbox Live Avatar, have become extensions of the people who use them.
You can try his implementation over here. I wonder if any of the guys at ISMAR 09 is going to have augmented business cards.
Good magazine has apparently asked some interviewees to imagine that will improve their daily life. The two ladies in the video below, Freya Estreller and Natasha Case, came up with Photoshop Glasses. A first step to improving the world may be seeing how much better it could be:
If you happen to think that’s a far fetched idea, you are probably right. However, we already saw head tracking software that puts on virtual masks on faces. So maybe in your next job interview, if the interviewer just looks a tad like your ex-boyfriend, all you’ll need to do is wear some dorky glasses, and see him as Optimus Prime.
Or used to, I’m currently in the trough of disillusionment. But never mind that, here’s how McDonald’s Italy chose to promote their new hamburger. Giving new meaning to Bruce Sterling claim that current AR is a bit cheesy.
Yesterday, Total Immersion (TI) and Int13 – both French augmented reality companies – announced a strategic partnership, in which Int13 would help TI cover a major gap in its product line: Mobile Augmented Reality.
A French kiss or a Russian bear hug?
Instead of guessing, we went out to speak with Stéphane Cocquereaumont, president and lead developer at In13, the mobile games boutique studio behind an AR game legend: Kweekies (“when is it coming out?”).
Ori: Congratulations Stéphane! This must be a big shift for Int13.
Stéphane: Thanks. We started discussions with TI back in April, so we knew where this was going for some time now.
Ori: What was TI’s motivation to approach Int13?
Stéphane: TI approached us because their clients kept asking for “360” solutions. While TI is strong with large installations, live shows, and PC based experiences – their mobile AR line needed a boost.
Ori: …and what about Int13? You had it going as an independent studio with Kweekies, first on Nokia and then on the iPhone.
Stéphane: We have been flooded with requests from marketing agencies about mobile AR campaigns. At first we tried to adress those requests, but we soon realized managing their expectations in terms of delays, pricing and capabilities of the tech posed a huge overhead, and was distracting us from our goals.
Ori: So, you decided to “outsource” the headache and focus on your product?
Stéphane: Exactly. TI will work with the marketing agencies and other players asking for quick mobile AR applications. We will offer them our tech embedded in a nice and clean SDK with a Lua API, easy to use but with limited flexibility.
Ori: You make TI happy, yet keep the full power to yourself. Make sense. What can you reveal about the business terms?
Stéphane: For TI this partnership means they have a working mobile AR SDK, with worldwide exclusive rights for two years. They pay an annual license fee, plus royalties on all the projects they deliver with our tech.
This should be a win-win partnership.
Ori (note to self): […more of a French kiss than a Russian bear hug.]
Stéphane: We’ve also made a deal with another french company, the project will be shown during CES in January 2010; very exciting project but I can’t say anything about it for now.
Ori: Thanks for teasing us. Can’t wait to see it.
Stéphane: We’re also discussing with device makers, we’ve been to Korea last month, and we’ll release our first AR game very soon (September or October) in Korea. The game will first be available on the SKT network, on Samsung devices.
Ori: Wow. You’re unstoppable.
Stéphane: Wait, there’s more – we’ll soon publish a preview video of ARDefender; it’s a simple game to help players discovers the capabilities of AR.
Ori: Fantastic. And when will we be able to finally play the legendary Kweekies?
Stéphane: Kweekies is delayed…too many other projects on the plate for our small team. We still intend to release it by Christmas – though we can’t promise… Ori: Awww…that’s a downer…any good news to close with a positive note?
Stéphane: Yes, I got something for you – we’ll soon reveal a new demo of ARWiz 2, the next iteration of our AR tech, faster and much more robust.
Ori: That’s a great comeback. Thanks for sharing the story behind the scenes, Stéphane.
And all the best for Int13 and TI in your new (in bed) relationship.
Total Immersion (TI) may not be at the center of the Augmented Reality (AR) browsers frenzy these days – but when it comes to delivering AR on a large scale – it’s still the 800 pound gorilla.
Nicolas Bapst, responsible for Product Marketing for Amusement Parks at TI – recently shared with me their latest achievements: a totally new kind of interactive 3D live show and an AR goggles experience The Networked City developed for TomorrowCity in South Korea .
The 3D live show is based on TI’s 3D Live Show technology (naming coincidence?):
…a very innovative and interactive screen movie production…This show introduces the U-city in a spectacular method and the audience can participate directly in the story performance.
With the new offering from Total Immersion, spectators share the stage with virtual live performers, playing a guessing game around what’s real and what’s not.
The 3D live show is not all TI had up its sleeve for the U-city. A second project, involving augmented reality (AR) goggles is: the Networked City
To the naked eye, the exhibit looks like a bare bones model of a city. But when visitors put on the special AR goggles a whole new world unfolds – as graphics overlaid on the city model.
How does this new world looks like?
Can’t say…no video of the exhibit was released so far.
Until then, you’ll have to travel to South Korea to see for yourself…
Actually, it was a relatively quiet week in the ARSphere. Here are some links to news bits that I haven’t had the time to cover over here:
In the mobile AR front:
Kooaba is an iPhone application that much like Snaptell (or Nokia’s “Point and Find”) lets you take a picture of a product and get information about it. Now they venture into the realm of AR browsers, but since they fail to show their image-based browser working on a real iPhone, I’ll remain skeptic for now.
Cyborg is an AR application that helps you find the cheapest gas station around. Yes, they could do that with a simple map, but that’s like having a web 2.0 site without rounded corners.
And if you live in Hong Kong, forget about gas prices, just use this application to find the nearest train.
Augmented reality wiki – what a fab idea! (especially considering the dire state of the “augmented reality” article at Wikipedia).
AdoptMe.com offers you to adopt augmented pets. Haven’t tested it, but seems quite shabby (it’s like the site’s design was taken from 1996).
This week video comes from Techcrunch’s favorite Tonchidot, makers of the Sekai Camera. Apparently their application was finally submitted to the iPhone’s appstore, and we may soon compare it to other AR browsers. The next video is indeed in Japanese, but starting from 0:45 you can easily understand what’s going on, even if you are not a native Japanese speaker. It certainly has some Japanese flair to it:
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](https://i0.wp.com/img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png)
Games Alfresco 