2009 will be remembered as the year augmented reality apps made the news. That was finally possible thanks to a new bread of mobile devices (Google phone, iPhone) that enable the new experience. These new devices pack the gear you need for AR: from cameras to GPS and compasses; they offer both power AND affordability. And the best part is that you already have them in your pocket.
However the fact that these devices are held in your hand is a double edge sword: yes, it’s accessible and intuitive – but at least one hand will always be tied up. Moreover, it offers a very narrow view into the Augmented world. I have dubbed this generation of AR hardware as the “HAND BAG” generation. A necessary stepping stone on the path towards the broader AR vision.
But what we really want is “NO BAG”. Hands free.
We want augmented reality directly in our field of view. Goggles.
Or better yet, cool sun glasses that BEHAVE like goggles.
So, what’s new in AR Goggles?
Vuzix is still the media darling and probably sells more goggles (Video iWear) to consumers than anyone else.
We can’t wait for the leaves on the trees in New England to turn red; that will signal the launch of Vuzix WRAP 920AV – the first commercial see-thru goggles for AR that don’t break your neck OR your wallet – scheduled for fall 2009.
As a reminder, my poll on the GDC post (which showcases yours truly donning the gizmo) shows a ratio of 47%-33% (Dork vs. Cool). We’re not quit there yet…
What else is out there?
I recently talked with Zvi Lapidot, CEO of Lumus, based in Israel and a major contender in the race to deliver your dream AR glasses.
Here’s what I captured from our discussion while wiping tasty humus with a pita bread:
Ori : Hi Zvi, you have significant experience in building optical solutions for Augmented Reality for military use; what was your goal when you embarked on designing a product for the consumer market?
Zvi: The goal was to deliver light weight, cool looking, see-thru glasses that overlay computer graphics on the screen – minus the head ache. We also needed to ensure that the brightness would be high enough for full outdoor, daylight use. We built a working prototype (see image from last year) which got closer to these objectives more than anyone before, plus it made a great impression on the market.
Ori: It does look better than the HMDs I tried in the 90’s. What are the specs of the prototype?
Zvi: From the website:
Display format is VGA 640 x 480 pixels;
Field of View 27.5°
Virtual screen size Equivalent of 60″ screen at 10 ft away; 600″ at 100 ft away
Eye motion box 10 x 10 mm
Displays full color
Transparency >70%
Brightness >400 FtL
Contrast ratio >100:1
Eye relief 22 mm
Input signal Composite video (NTSC or PAL)
Weight <100g
LOE thickness 2 mm
Ori: That’s impressive. And how did you enable AR tracking?
Zvi: By collaborating with AR specialists and Chinese partners we integrated a web camera and a compass (with 3DOF) into the prototype; and connected it to a phone with GPS. AR algorithms analyzed the video from the camera and overlaid graphics while tracking the real world. Several units of the prototype were even sold. Our eyewear has also been demonstrated for interactive gaming. Here is a game KDDI (a major Japanese telecommunications service provider) built with it employing a mobile phone (with built-in motion sensors) as a controller for AR bowling (watch at 0:47):
Ori: Cool. So when can we expect this to hit the market?
Zvi: bringing such a prototype to mass market production requires significant funding which we don’t have yet (so far we had a small funding round by angel investors including myself)
Ori: yes, I know what you mean. VCs still can’t see the huge potential of the augmented reality industry. There aren’t any commercial proof points. It’s the chicken and the egg problem once again: to invest in hardware you want to see demand for apps. Application developers can’t show demand because they rely on hardware…which is not there yet…
So what next?
Zvi: We actually weren’t satisfied with the above achievements. We thought we could do even better. So we have been designing a more ambitious version that further reduces the weight (well below 100g) and significantly increases the brightness (a must for outdoor operation). We’re using smaller-smarter electronics and focusing on aesthetics as well. This one will be really look cool.
Ori: will it include the gear required for tracking?
Zvi: Tracking will come as a plug-in component, like a “goody box” including camera, gyros, compasses etc.
Ori: And how long until we can lay our hands (and eyes) on the new beauty?
Zvi: We are currently in debug mode; planning to have the prototype ready by mid 2010. Mass market will come later.
Ori: So we might need to wait until 2011 until you offer a mass market product…well, at least it could change the ratio of Dork vs. Cool in favor of the latter…
What about cost?
Zvi: In mass market production it will be around a couple of hundred dollars.
Ori: That’s certainly reasonable. How do you plan to compete with Vuzix which reportedly plans to release see-thru goggles for the mass market as early as this fall?
Zvi: We welcome Vuzix to succeed and open the market.
What’s unique about our product is the optics. Our main advantage is the ultra-thin transparent optics that we offer and the high brightness of our display. As a result, we provide the optimal solution for outdoor AR scenarios, while maintaining a natural look and wearing comfort.
Games alfresco: Awesome. You got to demo your goggle at ISMAR this year – you know?
Zvi: We have been there a few years ago and were missing the commercial prospects. We run a business after all.
Games alfresco: oh, you are in for a great surprise this year – ISMAR will expand beyond the academia focus and will introduce new tracks dedicated to interactive media, humanities, arts and a stronger commercial focus.
Mobile augmented reality becomes a crowded space really quickly, and I’m about to give up reporting about every application that pops into the lime light.
Anyway, Robotvision is another iPhone “augmented reality browser” developed by Portland based Tim Sears. To be released in September (once iPhone OS 3.1 is out), Robotvision boasts some unique features like using Bing rather than Google for local listings (which some would say is a wise decision), and being offered as a white-label infrastructure for other application creators (though, if you are looking to create an AR application for the iPhone you may also want to consider creating a layer for Layar, or using the open source iphonearkit).
While I’m quite a skeptic whether Presslite’s Metro Paris application for the iPhone has “AR capabilities” in the version available on the appstore, there’s no denying Yelp’s application does.
Found by Robert Scoble (I’m pretty sure it was leaked to Scoble), and brought to my awareness my ReadWriteWeb, shaking your iPhone while on Yelp’s main menu three times, will open up an hidden feature named monocle. Monocle is nothing but an augmented reality view of Yelp’s listing, as shown in the next video (many thanks to Tom Carpenter for finding this one):
It only works on the iPhone 3gs, but unlike Metro Paris, it’s free, so don’t hesitate to tr y it out. Now, I don’t think that in the long run it matters whether Apple knew or not about this feature. Obviously, mobile augmented reality is here, and we are only about see more of it in the coming months. What should matter is what’s next? Where will innovation come from, if everyone is using the same compass and GPS combo?
I for one think that we are in the middle of the “AR browsers” season, but the next big thing, which better suits the technology at hand (imprecise compasses), is mobile AR games. What are your thoughts?
Augmented Reality has hit the iPhone app store. And we didn’t even have to wait for OS 3.1.
Presselite apps have been updated with a new Augmented Reality functionality called Your New Eye. This only works with the latest iPhone 3GS (compass needed). If you don’t believe it – check out the quick demo here :
In the words of co-founder Antoine Morcos:
Basically, with this application, you are able to see all the metro and bus stations around you (<1km), and also a lot of Points of Interest (Restaurants, etc.) via Augmented Reality, thanks to the camera.
London Bus is available on AppStore. (More details – screenshots, etc.)
Métro Paris for iPhone is also available here.
How come Apple approved an app that uses a private API ?
Does it really matter as long as it did?
Has Apple opened up?
Will it signal a flood of AR apps on the iPhone app store?
From our friends at Mobilizy, this exciting press release:
SALZBURG, Austria: AUGUST 26TH 2009. Mobilizy GmbH introduces WIKITUDE
3 for the Android OS and relaunches a completely new Wikitude.me geo-tagging platform. WIKITUDE 3 is the latest release of the Wikitude World Browser, the premiere mobile AR application for Android, which displays location-based, geo-specific content in a real-time augmented reality camera view on a smart-phone using GPS & gravimetric (compass) sensors.
WIKITUDE 3 is the latest release of the Wikitude World Browser, which presents the user with data about their surroundings, nearby landmarks, and other points of interest by overlaying information on the camera-view of a smartphone bringing information from the internet into context with the real-world. The Mobilizy development team has listened to it’s users and implemented several new features to improve and enhance the user experience within WIKITUDE 3. New features include:
*Full Integration with the Wikitude.me user-generated, geo-tagging platform;
*An enhanced User Interface (UI) which tightly aligns with the UI in
the forthcoming iPhone version of the Wikitude World Browser;
*Improved methods to enhance perspective and depth of perception of POIs (Smaller POIs indicate further distance, larger POIs indicate close proximity);
*The search and viewing-distance for POIs can be regulated by the user with a sleek slider bar;
*New & Improved filter options allow end-users to choose which content overlays and POI categories are displayed;
*Improved methods for locating POIs through search terms;
*An improved radar-overlay displaying the user’s current viewing direction and POIs within a specified radius;
*An entirely new “Beam-Me” feature which tele-ports the user to a pre-defined geo-location, allowing the user to experience a specified geo-data overlay;
Currently, WIKITUDE World Browser 3.0 offers data overlay sources from Wikipedia, *Qype and user-generated content from Mobilizy’s Wikitude.me (www.wikitude.me)
Wikitude.me
Mobilizy GmbH has partnered with Netociety Ltd., a specialist in enterprise social software, to develop an enhanced geo-tagging experience that empowers individuals with the tools to create POIs and location specific, hyper-linked digital content which can be viewed through the WIKITUDE World Browser. According to Markus Tripp, the project manager of Wikitude, “Wikitude.me is the first platform which allows individuals to actively contribute to augmented reality. This is an amazing and huge step forward in the AR industry!”
Wikitude.me provides an open, easy-to-use, free mobile information platform for anybody who wants to access or provide location based and situation-specific information or services via mobile phones. Basically, Wikitude.me can be understood as a platform which encourages community-driven content creation to which anybody can contribute freely, very similar to the philosophy of Wikipedia, but for mobile augmented reality. With regards to intellectual property, Wiktude.me is implemented under a Creative Commons
Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License.
To get started with Wikitude.me platform users can login through existing 3rd party accounts such as Yahoo!, Google, Twitter and Facebook. The ability to add points of interest and “geo-tag the world” is done through any Internet-enabled device, such as a netbook, laptop, desktop or a smartphone like the Apple iPhone, Nokia N97 and the Android handsets which are available today. For each point of interest there is a title, description (250 chars), category, language, and link to a URL. Each POI that is geo-tagged on the Wikitude.me platform is also cross-posted on Twitter (http://twitter.com/wikitude_me ) to inform the global Wikitude
community of the creation of fresh geo-content.
Mobilizy GmbH believes that the future of mobile augmented reality (Mobile AR) literally rests in the hands of the users. Our team can develop the infrastructure for Mobile AR experiences such as WIKITUDE 3 and platforms like Wikitude.me, but ultimately the end users will determine how mobile AR will be shaped. Mobilizy is constantly researching and developing ways to improve the WIKITUDE mobile AR experience by placing the user at the center of our development process.
NOTE: POI data created by early-adopters of the beta version of Wikitude.me will be migrated to the new platform early next week.
About Mobilizy:
Mobilizy GmbH is an early pioneer in commercial augmented reality and
the creator of the WIKITUDE World Browser, which is the first
practical augmented reality (AR) mobile application. Available on
Android (Coming soon to iPhone). Mobilizy engages in the research and
in-house development of location-based services and augmented (mixed)
reality experiences for smartphones. Mobilizy is one of the leading
innovators in developing new methods and applications for data
acquisition and exchange in the emerging market of augmented reality.
About Netociety:
Netociety Ltd. is a UK-Austrian based software development firm
helping companies customize, implement and adopt social software,
collaboration tools and best practice. Netociety facilitates the
development of collaboration systems for engaging with customers,
employees and partners. Improvements in innovation, change, marketing,
and productivity efforts are focused on.
WIKITUDE: The World IS the Platform!
————————
Mark A.M. Kramer
Product Strategist / Human Experience Lead
Planning to attend ISMAR 09 the world’s best augmented reality event?
If you are…read on.
Not planning to attend? Visit our ISMAR page. Change your mind…and then read on.
Here is a message from Steve Stapleton – the general co-chair of ISMAR 2009 and the mastermind behind the plan to expand this year’s event beyond academia to the commercial world:
We want to capture the ISMAR 2009 experience in as many ways a possible and increase dialogue and discourse. We are planning to incorporate different social networking programs. What social networking tools do you use or prefer? Twitter, Yammer, YouTube, Flikr, DokoDare, Kooaba?
As part of our mobile guide, we will be using DokoDare as an experiment for wayfinding and networking at ISMAR 2009. We will be marking all the exhibits and providing markers for each attendees to help connect during the conference and after hours.
All ISMAR participants can sign up for the special ISMAR Mobile Social Network and Local Search service, called “DokoDare” and operated by Kaywa. We strongly recommend going to the below link and completing the short registration process to receive your personal QR code for use of this no cost ISMAR special feature. It is available to all registered attendees before, during and after ISMAR 09.
Just a short tweet, to show you I’m still alive (actually, it was a tweet a few hours ago). Unfortunately, I’m not in Paris, but working hard at the moment. However, this next video presents an iPhone app that augments Paris (and looks suspiciously like acrossair applications).
It’s called Métro Paris, and the augmented reality is actually a new feature for an old application (which apparently is the top non-free application on the French iTunes). More details, here.
Hope you didn’t miss the weekly linkfest’s early edition, published yesterday, covering some of the best articles, posts and talks that were published during the week. Here are some more interesting bits from around the AR ecosystems making news this week:
Wired: Augmented reality? More like awkward hilarity. “these days the technical wizardry of AR has become edgy and chic – a way to boost the geek-cred of artists and designers. But there are still many limitations to the technology that can render the experience as something more akin to Uncle George than Gandalf.”
According to this article, IKEA has an application for you mobile phone so you could try furniture at your own house via AR (a favorite topic on this blog), but I can’t find any other article to support it.
Oh my guide! is an interesting concept AR application to help tourists that visit Milan for world expo 2015 to find a local to guide them to their destination. Obviously not feasible today, but maybe in 5 years mobile phones will support this level of augmentation. (via The Future Digital Life)
A short video demoing the new features in Layar 2.0. I think that although the grid was easy to implement, it adds quite a lot to the experience. Here’s a list of the currently available layers. Would one of my readers sponsor an Android phone for a poor blog writer?
Antoher AR application showing off a new interface is SREngine Lite, in this new video.
And finally, this week video comes from Hongik University of South Korea. It shows a project named “Will be”, created in 2004 (and presented in ISMAR05), which is the augmented reality take on a story board. It’s quite nice, though some of the features could have been more accessible if they were implemented via standard GUI, rather than ARUI:
Wow, it was quite a week for augmented reality, with some very interesting articles, blog posts and video lectures. It was such a prolific week, I’ve decided to split the weekly linkfest into two parts. Today I’m going to cover the best of the best of AR around the web, while I’m dedicating tomorrow to more mundane (but still interesting!), AR news items that I didn’t have the time to write about during the week.
Inside Out: Interaction Design for Augmented Reality
Joe Lamantia of UX matters presents a very interesting overview of augmented reality from the point of view of a user interface designer. He goes through four interaction design patterns (“Head up display”, “Tricorder”, “Holochess”, and “X-Ray vision”), and brings forward some missing patterns, that are great opportunities for AR designers and creators.
To reach its potential and avoid dismissal as a novelty technology, augmented reality needs new interaction patterns and experience concepts that address the weaknesses and gaps of this limited set of existing patterns. Only in the early stages of its evolution, augmented reality has the opportunity to refine and expand its range of interaction patterns without disrupting familiar models or incurring substantial costs.
Everything Everywhere
Tish Shute presents Thomas Wrobel’s Proposal for an Open Augmented Reality Network, based mostly on the Internet Relay Chat protocol and existing IRC servers. Wrobel goes through the advantages and disadvantages of using IRC as the basis for truly open AR network, and compares chat channels to AR layers.
People could join channels of information to view or contribute. Families could leave messages to each other scribbled in mid-air on private channels. Strangers can watch AR games being played between people in parks. People going into a restaurant could see the comments from recent guests hovering by the menu items.
None of this would have to be called up specially, if they are on the right channel when it was broadcast, they will see it.
History of Mobile Augmented Reality Daniel Wagner of Graz University of Technology is one of the leading researchers of mobile augmented reality. In this article he brings us a detailed time line going through the evolution of mobile AR from the late sixties to our days. You should read it to gain some historic perspective, and see how many of the ideas developed today in the industry have their roots in the academy as far as fifteen years ago.
Philippe Kahn invents the camera phone, a mobile phone which is able to capture still photographs. Back in 1997, Kahn used his invention to share a picture of his newborn daughter with more than 2000 relatives and friends, spread around the world. Today more than half of all mobile phones in use are camera phones.
If I wanted to, I could find someone to create a 3D model and put on a marker for less than $500. No AR developer is going to survive, in the long run, if they provide a product that can be reproduced by an offshore company, for a fraction of the price. This will soon include GPS/Compass based AR, as an open source toolkit is already available. … [companies] focusing most of their efforts on getting short term, viral publicity won’t have a viable product when the novelty of Augmented Reality wears off in a few months.
At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry
Bruce Sterling’s keynote address at the Layar event held at the beginning of this week. After a short introduction in which he shares his love to AR, Sterling presents the main issues and challenges AR developers are going to face in the coming few years. Security problems, cheesiness, the AR community of Kuala Lumpur, and nazi layers – you will find it all in this thought provoking talk:
Games Alfresco 