ISMAR 2009: Sneak Peek from HIT Lab New Zealand

Posted on October 8, 2009 by Ori Inbar

ISMAR, the world’s best Augmented Reality (AR) event is just 11 days away!

We have already provided a sneak preview of some of the demos.

Here are 2 research results, to be introduced at ISMAR, from one of the most prolific AR labs in the world: HIT Labs NZ, courtesy of Mark Billinghurst:

Embedded AR

We have been developing AR software for the Beagle Board OMAP3 development kit. This allows you to run a whole AR system on a $150 piece of embedded hardware and use Linux for development. The OMAP 3 chip is the same that is in many new smart phones so it is a great way to do some benchmarking and prototyping for mobile phone AR applications.

If EmbeddedAR will have similar adoption to the open source Artoolkit, then we’ll soon see AR-enabled devices popping up like mushrooms after the rain. Potentially very cool.

Android AR

We have been developing our own mobile outdoor AR platform based on the Android operating system. We are using GPS and compass information to overlay 3D virtual models on the real world outdoors. Unlike some other systems we support full 3D model loading and also model manipulation, plus rendering effects such as shadows etc.

That’s not as new. Rouli would categorize it as a YAARB™ (Yet Another AR Browser…)
Wikitude and Layar (as well as other browsers) have similar capabilities (or will soon have), and are already open and accessible to many developers.

Want to learn more about it? Check out Android AR.

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Just 2 more reasons to go to ISMAR 2009. It is going to be HUGE!

Don’t wait any longer – register Today!

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