Layar is Online

Posted on June 2, 2009 by rouli

Layar is a new augmented reality Android framework that comes from SPRXMobile. SPRXMobile, which previously brought us the ATM finder and this excellent post about the AR hype cycle, have kicked it up a notch with a full blown AR platform.
SPRXMobile don’t provide many details quite yet (they save it to Mobile 2.0), but here’s what was made public on their site:

  • It will be available for download on the Android Market before the first of July. However, at launch, the service itself will only be available in the Netherlands (one more reason to visit!)
  • Points of interest are shown on top of the video input using graphical symbols, their interpretation (the text describing them) is shown out of band, on the bottom of the screen.
  • You will be able to choose between different content layers. Companies will be able to create their own layers (e.g. a layer whose points of interest are Starbucks).
  • “Currently several companies have already signed up for Layar and will publish their own content in their branded layer soon.”

My educated guess is that they are using the compass+gps combo to identify points of interest. First, it works only on Android devices since “they are the only devices with a compass”. Then, “We have a little indicator showing you the accuracy of the location positioning”, which could be avoided using computer vision. If that’s the case, the main difference between them and Wikitude is having many content layers (which also justify their “first mobile browser” slogan).

Whatever is the case, seeing SPRXMobile previous projects, I’m sure this one will be a tight application with a lot of promise. Good luck guys! (Raimo, Maarten, feel free to comment).

(link)

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Weekly Linkfest

Posted on May 31, 2009 by rouli

Pizzas, Ghosts and Robots, all making augmented reality news this week:

Quote of the week comes from that WSJ article:

Madison Avenue has high hopes for the gimmick. “It’s the new bright and shiny object that marketers want,” says Tom Bedecarre, chief executive of AKQA, a San Francisco digital marketing firm that created the Postal Service campaign. AKQA is currently pitching several of its clients’ campaigns that include the technology.

Which means we should expect more bad novelty augmented reality ahead.

And to start off the coming week, here’s a nice clip showing projected pong game, made by two students from the IT University of Copenhagen. Here you can find out how they did it, and see some behind the scenes pictures.

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Useful AR from the US Postal Service

Posted on May 28, 2009 by rouli

The USPS has a very neat AR application, which is also surprisingly useful. Using FLARToolKit, you can now see if the stuff you intend to send fits in any of the flat-rate boxes. As the novelty augmented reality fad becomes old very quickly, I hope more companies will favor a more useful approach to AR.

usps_ar

Try it yourself here, via Living in Augmented Reality.

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Future Lions Love AR

Posted on May 27, 2009 by rouli


Future Lions is a yearly competition that allows student to show off innovative concepts in the world of advertisement. Winners are honored at the Cannes Festival but all participants get free exposure to leading agencies. This year’s concept was to “develop an idea for advertising a global brand in a way that would not have been possible five years ago”. Naturally, many students picked augmented reality. Here’s a quick scan of some of them (as surely more will surface in the coming days). You do have to remember that all videos featured below are just concepts, and no “real” augmented reality was involved. It does show how young advertisers (or at least some of them) are trying to go beyond Novelty-AR, and look for true ways to complement their campaigns via augmented reality (unlike say, the guys behind the Papa Johns campaign).


Geepseed – an augmented reality Tamaguchi for Greenpeace
It’s like int13’s Kweekies with an environmental saying behind it.

Try out IKEA furniture before you buy
When Meaio created their iLiving application, I was a bit skeptical, but somehow this next clip makes me see what a great idea this is after all, especially for a company like IKEA. If I were IKEA, investing in such technology would be the first item on my schedule. Update: There’s a live demo for you to play with, here.

Gatorade virtual coaches
I had a similar idea once, it looked better in my imagination :)

Yo!Sushi Augmented Menus
This falls in the novelty category. Why would anyone want to see sushi in 3d?

Augmented tee-shirts for United Colors of Benton
We’ve seen a similar (working) demo from Squidder, and it better suits Threadless anyway.

Disney’s Up characters come to life
What Topp’s augmented baseball cards should have been.

Facebook world
We all had that idea sometime, now Alex Hachey shows us how it would look (you should not use AR when crossing a road)


Honorable mentions:

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Where 2.0: The World is Mapped – Now Use it to Augmented our Reality

Posted on May 26, 2009 by Ori Inbar

O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 event is a tightly run ship. One track for all attendees, fast paced 20 minutes sessions, discussing laser focused topics.

Low tech location services at Where 2.0

Low tech location services at Where 2.0

I got my fair share (3 minutes!) to educate the audience about how AR could impact our life, as part of the Mobile Reality panel, covered by Rouli.

A show of hands survey confirmed that only 5% of the audience was familiar with the concept of augmented reality before the event. Not too surprising considering the percentage among the general population is less than 1%.

What came out strongly at the event is that unbelieveable amount of data is being captured about people, places and things around the world. This data combined with sophisticated models (such as Sense Networks) result in the existence of super intelligent information about the world that we still don’t really know how to use.

My point is not a shocker: all we need is to tap into this information and bring it, in context, into people’s field of view.

***

For some time now, researchers in the augmented reality community have attempted to leave markers behind and leap into the great world of outdoor AR (alfresco). These pioneers typically hit walls such as low accuracy of GPS, lack of 3D modeled environments, and the usual device-specific limitations.

Where 2.0 gave stage for two new approaches to map the world that may help overcome the traditional challenges: Earthmine and Velodyne’s Lidar.

Earthmine uses its own camera-based device to index reality, at the street level, one pixel at a time. They have just announced Wild Style City – an application that allows anyone to create virtual graffitis on top of designated public spaces. However, at this point, you can only experience it on a pc!

Why not take advantage of their 3D pixel inventory of the world to make these graffiti work of arts available to anyone on the street? All is needed is some AR magic and a powerful mobile device.

The second novice approach is Velodyne’s Lidar. Remember Radiohead’s funky laser (as opposed to video) clip?

They did it with Lidar.

Now Velodyne is embarking on a broader mission to map the outdoors. Check out this experiment.

Can AR researchers harness these new approaches to index reality?

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Augmented Reality at Where 2.0

Posted on May 25, 2009 by rouli

A video of the mobile reality panel at last week’s Where 2.0 conference, featuring Raven Zachary (raven.me) Mok Oh (EveryScape Inc.) Will Carter (Nokia Research Center Hollywood) Ori Inbar (Pookatak Games, Inc.) Anthony Fassero (earthmine, inc.).
Though Ori is the only one showing any real AR examples, and readers of this blog probably have already seen them, I still think it’s worth while to watch:

Ori, your accent is much better than what you had us believe.

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Weekly Linkfest

Posted on May 24, 2009 by rouli

Well, a very slow week in terms of augmented reality comes to an end. Though the Where 2.0 conference was held this week, there is still no video of the mobile reality panel Ori attended. The slow week also explains why the top post on Game Alfresco was “Top 10 augmented reality demos that will revolutionize video games” for the third week in a row, and on Augmented Times it was the post about the new SREngine video.

Anyway, here are some more augmented-reality related news from around the web:

  • South Korea is investing twelve billion won on augmented reality research. It translates to about 10 million US dollars. Interestingly, South Korea is behind 24% of the world’s AR related patents (just after the US and Japan, and twice the number of EU patents). Thanks David for the tip!
  • New Scientist: “Innovation: How cellphones will enhance reality“. Nothing really new in there (Enkin, Nokia’s MARA and Wikitude are mentioned).
  • Julian Perretta has a whole clip accessible through FLARToolKit for his song “Ride my Star“.
  • New video of Tonchidot’s Sekai Camera surfaces.
  • From the Where 2.0 – “Wearable Sensory Substitution Devices for Navigation“. Augmenting other senses (other than sight) for those who are vision impaired or suffer from Alzheimer. One of my first posts was about this topic, and I’m glad to see that AR is used for helping others.

Finally, the video clip of this week comes from this Coca Cola campaign, making the rounds on Twitter. Looks fun, I guess:

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New SREngine Video

Posted on May 20, 2009 by rouli

Sein has just posted a new video on his blog (in Japanese, though an English version is apparently in the workings). I think it’s really amazing what one man can do on his own:

I’ve covered SREngine before, and so did Ori, and from video to video you could really see how this application takes shape.

Though using image recognition makes it a bit slow (for the meanwhile) in comparison to systems based purely on GPS and compass positioning , it allows it to identify smaller things, at shorter distance and within close quarters. I really can’t wait to see it available on the appstore.

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Weekly Linkfest

Posted on May 17, 2009 by rouli

This week’s top post on Games Alfresco was, for the second week in a row, Top 10 augmented reality demos that will revolutionize video games“. On Augmented Times it was my old rant about using AR to market cars.
Here are some other weekly augmented reality news from around the web:

  • Thomas Carpenter had some great posts this week (he is a fierce contender for the top AR blogger spot), but his best was surely this one, where he interpolates current trends to come to the conclusion that Augmented Vision will be available circa 2015.
  • ReadWriteWeb discovers augmented reality.
  • LittleProjectedPlanet takes Little Big Planet and translates it to the projected AR format, or so they say.
  • Not only Star Trek, Night at the Museum 2 (what were they thinking?) , uses AR for promotion (in Australia), but in a tired “novelty” way. Best of all, they claim it’s the “first time ever in the world that it’s been done with newsprint” (source). Obviously they come from a different world than I do.
  • McCANN New York brings us an augmented reality pencil application to scribble on our screens.
  • BMW took its augmented reality campaign to promote the Z4 model to the streets of London, and actually got a cool video.

And, as usual, here’s a short clip to welcome the next week. Using augmented reality British Football fans (soccer) can see themselves lifting the FA Cup using this web application. And here’s a nice quote from this clip’s Youtube page – “FA Cup sponsor E.ON has applied the latest military technology known as Augmented Reality to the oldest domestic cup competition in the world”. Apparently, FLARToolKit is a military technology :)

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