Safe for Humans is a really smart mobile app concept that harness augmented reality to make people more aware of car accidents involving pedestrians. As you can see in the video below, it will use “natural” markers and probably GPS. However the big challenge here, I suspect, would not be pinpointing the user’s location, but rather matching the video to the user’s orientation.
SAN DIEGO – February 15, 2011 – Qualcomm Incorporated (NASDAQ: QCOM) today announced the winners of its 2010 Augmented Reality (AR) Developer Challenge. The top prize of $125,000 was awarded to a team of two developers from Lithuania, Paulius Liekis and Arminas Didžiokas for Paparazzi. Second prize of $50,000 was awarded to Defiant Development Pty Ltd. for Inch High Stunt Guy. Third prize of $25,000 was awarded to five graduate students at the University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts for their submission, Danger Copter. The Challenge, which kicked off with the public availability of Qualcomm’s AR software development kit (SDK) in October 2010, encouraged developers to create a new generation of vision-based AR applications, including innovative games, educational applications and interactive marketing concepts.
“Qualcomm congratulates the winners and all the developers that provided submissions,” said Jay Wright, director of business development at Qualcomm. “With just over three months of development time since the SDK became available, developers have shown that compelling AR experiences can be created rapidly using Qualcomm’s platform.”
Winning Applications
1st Place – $125,000 – Paparazzi by Paulius Liekis and Arminas Didžiokas (Lithuania)
An interactive game where the player becomes a virtual paparazzo and sneaks pictures of a vain celebrity before he gets agitated and attacks the photographer
2nd Place – $50,000 – Inch High Stunt Guy by Defiant Development Pty Ltd. (Australia)
A game where the player arranges various obstacles to enable a stuntman to successfully jump his motorcycle through a hoop
3rd Place – $25,000 – Danger Copter by Alex Beachum, Jonghwa Kim, Jason Mathias, Kedar Reddy and Evan Sforza (USA)
A gaming adventure where the player becomes a helicopter pilot who maneuvers a water-spouting chopper to extinguish fires and rescue people from danger
The judges for the Challenge were a mix of individuals from industry and academia. Entries were judged based on creative concept, technical execution, overall user experience and other factors.
Publically available since October 2010, Qualcomm’s AR platform uses computer vision technology to align graphics tightly with underlying objects in the real world. The approach is an evolution from current AR techniques that use a device’s GPS and compass for mapping applications. Vision-based AR delivers a fundamentally different user experience in which graphics appear as if they are anchored to real world objects.
Select video clips of applications submitted to the Challenge can be viewed at www.qualcomm.com/ar. To create your own application, visit Qualcomm’s AR developer portal at developer.qualcomm.com/ar.
This week’s video is a must see. Being in German, I can’t tell you much about it, but it seems to be a concept design for in car head up display done as a university assignment. It looks very realistic and compelling – I can’t wait to have such a display in my car:
As eBooks are slowly eroding the pricing structure of physical books, publishing houses are looking for ways to make the book as an object more appealing. The ideas of limited editions or signed copies are going to expand to gimmicks like augmented reality covers, or special content for hardcovers only.
The latest book in Jean Auel’s series about a woman surviving the time around the end of an ice age 30,000 years ago comes with a special sticker on the front that gives the buyer a special augmented reality experience. The main character Ayla will come alive on the computer screen by the power of AR.
Here’s the publisher’s description:
THE LAND OF PAINTED CAVES concludes the story of Ayla, her mate Jondalar, and their little daughter, Jonayla, taking readers on a journey of discovery and adventure as Ayla struggles to find a balance between her duties as a new mother and her training to become a Zelandoni — one of the Ninth Cave community’s spiritual leaders and healers.
Once again, Jean Auel combines her brilliant narrative skills and appealing characters with a remarkable re-creation of the way life was lived thousands of years ago, rendering the terrain, dwelling places, longings, beliefs, creativity and daily lives of Ice Age Europeans as real to the reader as today’s news.
Will this AR add-on help convince a reader to purchase the hardcover rather than wait for a regular copy or download an e-version? Probably not. But it is another step in the expansion of my favorite new technology and for that, I cheer.
The results for the 2010 Qualcomm AR Developer Challenge are coming next week on February 15th. Qualcomm released this teaser video today:
Developers from around the world participated in Qualcomm’s 2010 Augmented Reality (AR) Developer Challenge and created rich AR experiences including interactive games, educational applications, and marketing concepts. These apps use Qualcomm’s AR platform, which includes the AR SDK for Android and the AR Extension for Unity.
I found this week’s video on Toby’s weekend “linkfest”. It’s one more example how augmented reality can upgrade almost any old board game, this time making “battleships” more interactive. As Toby rightfully states, there’s no need for two boards when AR is deployed, as the two players can be shown different views of the same board. Still, it’s a cool demo:
** Cool experience with the smartphone and seeing into another location. Would love to be able to walk around or zoom in. Next step is to offer a live feed from various locations of the Superbowl during the game. Maybe next year.
Steelers and Packers Magically Come to Life in USA TODAY
Super Bowl Coverage to Include Augmented Reality
SAN FRANCISCO, MUNICH, (February 3rd, 2011) – When the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Green Bay Packers meet on Sunday at the Dallas Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, to go head to head at this year’s Super Bowl, fans will be able to enrich their experience with augmented reality tidbits, courtesy of USA TODAY and junaio, the most advanced Augmented Reality browser. For smartphone users, the Friday, February 4th edition of USA TODAY will include a 360 degree tour of the Dallas Cowboys stadium, presented by Jerry Jones, stadium and Cowboys owner, along with interior and exterior highlights. The Monday, February 7th edition will give readers a 3D view of the “Play of the Game” in an animated sequence and an option to receive player stats. Pepsi and Papa John’s are sponsoring the two augmented reality experiences.
The new Cowboys Stadium, opened in May 2009, is the largest domed stadium in the world and a marvel of architecture and technology. How suiting of USA TODAY to employ the leading edge technology of Augmented Reality to allow the Cowboys’ owner Jerry Jones to introduce his impressive sports palace to football fans nationwide. All that is required is to download the free app junaio from Apple’s iPhone App Store or the Android Market Place.
With the junaio channel “USATODAY 360 Stadium Tour”, the viewer finds himself right in the middle of the Cowboys Stadium enjoying a 360 degree view as he moves the camera around his own position. Clicking on the screen lets the user jump to where the players enter the stadium, down into the locker rooms or to view some of the famous murals of contemporary art decorating the interior of this fabulous stadium.
For people reading about the game in USA TODAY’s Monday February 7th edition, junaio’s image recognition technology brings to life the Super Bowl “Play of the Game” in the junaio channel “USATODAY SuperBowl Key Play”. This is presented not as a video, but as a 3D animation, created within hours of the game, whereby the viewer’s camera angle is determined by the smartphone’s position relative to the newspaper picture so that every player’s move can be studied from different angles.
“This cooperation between USA TODAY and junaio”, says Peter Meier, the developer of junaio, “is another great example of our vision of the ‘Augmented City’ and how augmented reality is able to bring additional value to everyday life. Just as junaio lets the viewer look inside the Cowboys Stadium, it can also assist buyers, looking for office space on the real estate market, to get a first glimpse of a vacant office by simply clicking on the building. And the second example of the 3D game play animation demonstrates how print editorials and even news can be augmented with digital displays, thereby enriching the reader’s experience.”
About junaio®
junaio is the world’s most advanced mobile Augmented Reality browser and growing daily with interesting content relevant to a viewer’s location or triggered through images and objects the camera is pointing at. The unmatched ease of use, great choice of content and superior features make junaio everybody’s daily companion, an instant source of information about places, events, bargains or objects in the world around us. Features are: location based services using onboard GPS and compass, highly accurate positioning, even inside buildings or exhibition sites, object recognition and natural feature tracking useful for scaling and integrating graphic overlays or 3D models into the real world. Two-way interaction between the user and the displayed AR overlays allow gaming and other virtual experiences. And of course the full range of multimedia displays, including text, image, sound, video. junaio was created by metaio GmbH, the worldwide leader in Augmented Reality.
Robert Scoble, the interviewer of the geek-stars and employee of Rackspace, recorded this video at Metaio in Munich. The gang at Metaio shows off a virtual dragon clinging to a building and talks about their AR browser Junaio. If the only thing you want to know about is dragons invading your home, fast forward to 3:15 in the video to get your fix.
Good to see AR being bandied about as a marketing term without much explanation. Sadly, I still have to explain AR to most people I talk to outside the tech arena, so for now it’s just one of those flashy words that make our brain want to buy it and not an actual logical factor in purchasing a product.
A bit of a busy week, here are just some of the augmented reality stories that happened in the past seven days:
Where can you find Metaio’s Peter Meier and Layar’s Maarten Lens-FitzGerald on the same panel? At the DLD conference. Video well worth worth watching if only for seeing Lens-FitzGerald’s face when Meier declares Junaio as the most advanced AR mobile application.
Pantomation is the late 70’s edition of Kinect and augmented reality. Makes me wonder what the people of 2040 will think about our current technology (via @String)
Sometimes, you don’t need enticing narrative to create a touching AR application. “Jack in the box” by the Spanish company Sensaa is an evidence to that. Just open a box, and an augmented surprise will pop out of it. Simple, but wonderful:
Games Alfresco 