Just playing around with Google Ngram viewer. If you didn’t get to try it yet, it’s a tool that shows the number of times a phrase appears in a big corpus of books that Google scanned.
So, “augmented reality” popularity is rising:
but, it still has a lot to go (at least when compared to virtual reality)
Unfortunately, Google’s database stops at the critical point, two years ago, right before the big buzz around AR started. Still, one can appreciate how quickly VR moved from the scientific lecture to popular lecture, while AR is taking its time.
As you may have guessed this passing week was very slow in augmented reality news (or any news for that matter). Nevertheless, I scoured the web and bring you this weekly linkfest.
Last week I reported on the winter crop of augmented reality games coming from Qualcomm AR Game Studio. The videos of three more games were recently uploaded, so be sure to check them up.
DOMO, Tonchidot’s newest project, aspires to enable transparent society, where you could see everyone’s thoughts and interests.
Open question on Quora – What will be the most important developments in augmented reality in 2011? I tried giving my best answer, though you may disagree with me. (via @TishShute)
What a better way to start the new year than playing a round of augmented golf? That’s exactly what the students at Rochester Institute of Technology thought when they came up with this game that doesn’t require an entire fairway.
Never in the definition of mixed reality did I imagine that anyone would slap moving eyeballs onto a car so you could tell which way the driver was looking (or not, in this age of cellphones). Yet, here it is, in all its strange and thoroughly Japanese-way. In mother Japan, we don’t augment you into the car, we augmented the car onto you.
Now let’s see them shed some gear by applying a Kinect sensor. Something tells me they’re probably already moving that way.
Congrats Yoichi Ochiai and Keisuke Toyoshima from the University of Tsukuba for helping us end the burgeoning year of AR with a grandiloquent example of what this technology has in store for us in the future.
Last year I asked a group of AR bloggers and the readers of Games Alfresco and Augmented Times to guess what 2010 holds for augmented reality. You can see them all here. A year has passed, and 2011 is just around the corner, it’s time to confront reality and check how prescient were we. Remember, this post is not about making fun of some or praise others. Actually, most of our predictions were incorrect, but at least we are not shy about them.
The year 2010 was marked by many important milestones and events for the nascent technology. Which one was more important? If I missed one that you thought was important, just add it to the comment section.
Shotgun Showdown is a two players western styled shooting game which utilizes two $20 bills as an arena/required marker. I wonder whether the winner takes both bills.
If you thought that tracking dollar bills was original, than get ready for Volcano Fever, a game that uses condom wrappers as a marker. It’s more than just a weird artistic choice by the game designer. The goal of Volcano Fever is to teach proper condom use.
I understand the volcano metaphor, but what’s the octopus supposed to symbolize? … Anyway, next is, as promised, Nerdferno, a game that puts you in a God like position, determining the fate of cubicle dwellers. If you looked for original AR content, you’ve found it:
You can read more about these games and others, such as Spintopia and Bug Juice, on the studio’s website, and about previous AR games from Georgia Tech here.
I have frequently lashed out at gimmicky usage of augmented reality in ad campaigns. However, the next campaign by German agency brand.david powered by Junaio gets only praises from me. First, it’s for a good cause – bringing the subject of domestic violence to light. It also seems to use AR very effectively:
What is it about Franz Kafka’s masterpiece, The Metamorphosis, that bring so many to adapt it to new mediums?
Last year it was adapted to virtual reality, and now a new free Android application inspired by the salesman turned insect story has been released. Meet Kafkara:
It’s pretty basic right now, due to the fact that a single man is behind it. That man, Clive Cox had the following to say:
It allows you to take a picture of a person’s face which is then extracted and placed on a 3D avatar and shown in augmented reality. The avatar can be given a message or have one recorded which it can then speak on request. The app also allows ones to automatically create avatars from peoples facebook or twitter profiles (if they have a face in their profile picture) and the created avatar will be kept up to date with that person’s tweet/news feed.
The last year the augmented reality movement has been accelerating at an ever increasing pace as new applications and companies are forming so fast it’s hard to keep up. The addition of the Kinect sensor has given the technology an even bigger power boost and now I can barely keep up with just the Kinect related news, even when I regularly check the Kinect Hacks site.
While I’m certain this list and content would be different in another month, I think there is enough Kinect related stuff to take a look at the top ten uses of the Kinect sensor for augmented reality. Here they are, in no particular order:
10. Play Music
Who says Tom Hanks should have all the fun? I could show you a number of Kinect hacks for playing the piano with your hands, but doing it Big-style is all the more awesome.
9. Graffitti Tool
With the world as your canvas let your artistic soul flow.
8. Lightsaber Battles
Embrace the dark side with your inner Jedi. Be the Star Wars Kid in real-time. Now we just need some game play around the hack.
7. Utilize the technology from the Minority Report
Besides bringing us couch jumping madness on the Oprah show, Tom Cruise also played a part in bringing AR to the big screen. Now you can utilize that same technology on your TV screen.
6. Puppet Shows
Puppets? Puppets are kids stuff right? Unless you’re not counting Chucky, Bride of Chucky, that alien thing that bursts out of your chest, etc.
5. Robot Sight
One of the biggest reasons why robots aren’t more widespread is because they can’t see the world like we do. The Kinect system now gives robot designers a quick and easy way to help their robot see. I’m even investigating using it for our automated logistics delivery vehicles at work.
4. Playing Games
Pretty obvious one, eh? Could find a good dozen games to show you, but I’m a fan of the classics. Besides, there’s that whole Xbox thing you can purchase that has a ton more Kinect games on it. Who knew?
3. Invisibility
Not very useful until AR glasses are in widespread use, but to look like the Predator in your very own living room is spectacular.
2. Projection into Virtual Worlds
Lightsabers, remote projection, space stations; this hack has everything and more. Even more fantastic is that the two people in the video are projecting from separate location. Could Kinect sensors make telepresence more usable?
1. Sign Language Recognition
One of technologies more profound benefits to humankind is the ability to give those with disabilities more access to the world. Just like a translation software, the Kinect sensor can read sign language and convert to human speech. Or teach deaf children how to learn sign language.
Special thanks to Kinect Hacks for continuing to catalog the many wondrous uses of the Kinect sensor.
I hate it when I’m scheduling a post just to find out that someone else (this time Augmented Planet) publish a post about it just a day before my goes up. Luckily ARTags is important enough to deserve two posts within 24 hours.
Coming to us from France, ARTags is an AR drawing application, that apparently makes it very easy to draw nice looking pictures on your mobile phone and add them to your current location. Though it’s quite new, already more than 1500 pictures were drawn using this app all across the world.
But that doesn’t make it special. What makes ARTags special is the fact that it’s a cross platform app. That is, the pictures are visible using Wikitude, Layar and Junaio (though I had a bit of a problem finding the right channel on Wikitude). Instead of creating a new browser application, or integrating within only one of the above three, the folks behind ARTags decided to have a presence in all of them. That’s absolutely the right decision, at least at this stage. I certainly hope that other app developers will follow.
Now, if only someone invented an app to make its user better artists.
Unfortunately, Google’s database stops at the critical point, two years ago, right before the big buzz around AR started. Still, one can appreciate how quickly VR moved from the scientific lecture to popular lecture, while AR is taking its time.
Games Alfresco 