5 Things To Do With Junaio Glue and LLA Markers

Posted on July 7, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

With the live video access on the iPhone OS 4.0, Metaio is looking to make a splash with its Glue technology in the Junaio AR browser. They would like to show how the iPhone can do more than GPS AR browsing with both image processing and their indoor LLA marker tracking.

LLA Markers

The LLA markers are designed for indoor spaces when GPS becomes unusable. By attaching the latitude, longitude and altitude to a unique pattern, the iPhone can reposition itself without having access to satellites. Since the compass and gyroscope still work, you can point your phone away from the LLA marker and get navigation to the next POI.

This case shows how AR can be superior to map based location using the LLA marker technology. In underground malls when GPS becomes useless, AR can help bridge the gap. I’ve spent considerable time in Japan and often have been lost once I strolled far from my starting location. I would have to go up to the surface to get my barrings occasionally. If they installed LLA markers, it would allow the iPhone to become a useful navigator.

Junaio Glue

In addition to indoor GPS locations, Metaio has improved AR by adding live optical image processing.  By uploading a tracking image to the Junaio servers, anyone can create an optical image that 3D content and information can be attached.  To check out the technology, download Junaio and view this Glue comic character to see how it works.

This image processing along with a standard browser opens up a wealth of possibilities for Junaio.  Now content providers can be more creative with their applications, utilizing visual clues along with GPS and directional ones.

Here are a few ideas that might spur your interest:

1) Using available 3D content on the web, turn your run-of-the-mill picture book into a 3D pop-up with your iPhone.  Just upload each page as a marker and attach the image to it.

2) Create an augmented menu based on the logo of your restaurant.  Or just have it link to your webpage.  Make the world your Internet.

3) Location based treasure hunts using actual pictures of locations to find the next clue.

4) Turn your face into a business card.

5) Turn your logo into a charity event.  Every time someone checks your logo using Junaio and it pulls the image or link from your server, give them a chance to donate, or make a small donation on their behalf.

If you have other ideas, feel free to comment!

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Gonzo-Reality

Posted on July 6, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

The story Bruce Sterling posted up last week on his Wired blog blew my mind.  It shouldn’t have really.  But I guess I’ve been considering augmented reality and its commercial uses to be official and sanctioned.  This kind of unofficial gonzo-view of reality could go a long way.

First, if you’re too lazy to click the link and check out the article, the leak in your hometown gang have made an augmented reality view that shows the oil leak on your smartphone when you point it at any BP logo, assuming you have the proper layer pulled up.

Mark Skwarek, one of the creators, sent me an email about the project as I was writing up this post.  Here’s some of the progress they’ve made and other places talking about it.

We were featured on WIRED’s Beyond the Beyond. We have an upcoming show at Famous Accountants in Bushwick NY, Aug 7th through Sept 4th. We are showing it at the Bronx Art Space in NYC. We were featured on Turbulence’s Networked_Performance and will present on it at Upgrade! Chicago in September. We were also featured on Eyebeam’s Reblog. And we are in the upcoming Cyberarts.

This project itself seems simple and is quite ingenious.  But why stop at poking fun at the world’s current kick toy?  Pointing your smartphone at random objects and getting an individual person’s POV visual could be quite mind expanding.

An unofficial game of object-association could make great interactive art, political rhetoric, or dystopic reinforcing world-view; depending on its implementation.  Wouldn’t you like to point your smartphone at everyday objects and find out how your favorite artists or celebrities view the world?  Seeing how YoYo Ma, or the Dalai Lama or Bruce Campbell (the guy from the Evil Dead series) view the world could be liberating.  Or since our own Bruce Sterling is the Prophet of AR, one of the AR browsers could do a “Bruce Layer” and show us what kind of world he sees when he’s looking around.

Maybe if Glenn Beck was your thing, you’d have a Nazi symbol pop-up when you pointed it at an Obama sticker.  Or if you were a former Bush-hater, you could see a Stalin-esque version of the W with your smartphone.   Propaganda could be all encompassing, blotting out all but the sanctioned viewpoints.

I’m absolutely certain I wouldn’t want to see what Lady Gaga has in mind for the world.  Well.  I might take a peak for a few minutes.  Just out of curiosity.  Not like I’m a fan or anything.  Just curious.

And maybe that’s what a gonzo-reality could bring to AR.  Instead of a mirror reflecting all of our beliefs into an ever-increasing sine wave, we might be privy to alternate views to our own.  Maybe even trying out how someone else sees the world.

Maybe.

Or maybe we couldn’t handle their viewpoint.  The overstimulating rush would make our realities spin around us until we puked it back out, losing all those alternate nutrients our world views could have used to grow.

Oh well.

It’s a nice little project, anyway.

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The Augmented Reality Ballet

Posted on June 30, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

The Ballet Font Project combines ballet with augmented reality.  I assume they’ll have big screens showing the combined real time dance with the foot drawn fonts.  The project is a rare cross breed between geekdom and high-end culture.

Used watch batteries and infrared LEDs to create a 2D motion tracking system. We taped these little devices to ballet dancers and had then perform moves which formed letters, which will be used in a headline font called “Ligne”.

This video shows a few letters being performed where we’ve used to the tracking data to overlay FX. The stroke width is controlled by the speed of movement. We’ll be doing a live demonstration at the Armory in Portland, Oregon on Thursday, July 1, 2010. Participants will be able to use the tracking devices to do real time augmented reality.

This project is the brainchild of Weiden + Kennedy’s WK12. Oregon Ballet Theatre contributed the choreography and dancing talent. I developed three versions of software called “Chireo” (chirography + choreography). “capture” did the initial motion and video capture. “augment” let us clean up the data and export the font and rendered videos. “live” is the real time motion tracking / augmented reality software we’ll be using at the demo. Todd Greco here at Fashionbuddha helped on the visual FX in the “augment” and “live” versions.

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Robots Need Augmented Reality Too

Posted on June 30, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

The object recognition portion of augmented reality is a little like that hand-held label printer that you got when you were a kid and then went crazy putting tags on everything in your room.  Did you really need to put a tag on your table that said, “Table”?  Nah.  But it felt good doing it.

High-end object recognition (and I’m including facial) is really a key component to ubiquitous AR.  Well, and those pesky glasses, but we won’t talk about them today.

So back to object recognition.  For our computers to understand the world enough to create seamless reality interfaces, they’re going to have to understand what a chair is, where it is when they see it and what it’s used for.  This understanding will be useful for us humans, but it will be even more useful for robotics in the future.

With easy access to information, labeled in a computer friendly way, robots can learn to use our environment better than before.  And I’m not even talking about high-end robotics either.  A couple of cameras on a Roomba could help it know when to vacuum the floor and when to stay put because a party is going on.  We use unattended vehicles to transfer parts around our Toyota plants.  Allowing these simple vehicles to know when a box has been left in the way and to quietly move around would make them work better.

And who knows, maybe in the far-flung future when Turing level robots become possible, they’ll educate themselves on the wider world by taking long journeys and absorbing the trash-tags left by their human overlords.

And for fun, here’s a picture and video of a robot.

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Kickball AR App

Posted on June 24, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

I guess I feel compelled to post this app because of the World Cup.  It’s a cute idea worth a few minutes of play time, but after that, I’m not sure what the appeal would be.  Personally, I’m ready for the next phase of smartphone AR which requires more awareness of objects and the world. Floating augmented objects just isn’t tickling my fancy anymore.

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Digital Bullets: Augmented Reality – Financially Viable Or A Gimmicky Technology Driven Fad?

Posted on June 21, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

Lavolta asked a number of CEOs the above question: Augmented Reality – Financially viable or gimmicky technology driven fad?  If you’re a long time reader of Games Alfresco, I don’t suppose I’ll need to expound on my views.  But I would like to hear what your thoughts are about the comments made by the various CEOs (about fifteen.)

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TV Trickery with Augmented Reality

Posted on June 21, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

We’re a long way from fooling the man on the street, but augmented reality may soon play trickery on your TV screens.  This video montage combining scenes from movies like The Running Man and Wag the Dog; and bits of real-time AR from the last few years makes for a convincing argument about the future of this new medium.

I’m partial to such obscuring of reality as it speaks to my science fiction interests.  Whenever I see a video like this is makes me think of one of my favorite authors, Philip K. Dick.  And while this argument is probably twenty years too soon, the ubiquitous use of AR may eventually enchant the populous with its devious wares.  Though you may scoff at such influences, think long and hard about how current technologies and techniques subject the masses to keep the absence of reason as their masters.

But like I said, that argument is twenty-years too soon, or twenty-years too late, if you consider the wealth of propaganda techniques which by and large are more insidious in their use.  Of course, the real danger is not that sophisticated techniques will be developed to hide or alter the truth, its that they will know everything about you so that they can tailor their obfuscation to maximum effect.  But I digress.

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Augmented Reality’s Console Upgrade

Posted on June 15, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

I’ve been watching the news from E3 with keen interest.  First off, I’m a gamer, if you can’t tell.  But I’m also wildly curious how augmented reality will shape the future of gaming.  Now I haven’t seen any games that strictly use AR, but the direction consoles are taking shows how AR is shaping them.

Microsoft’s Kinect

The formally named Project Natal previews have shown how the dual camera system would allow for gesture based gaming.  The concept doesn’t change with the new name, but we have more information about it.  One of the cooler parts of the system doesn’t even deal with gaming.  Gestures and words will now access the interface like Minority Report.

While we’re a long way from invisible AR systems that travel with us and connect us to the world in new and unique ways, the Kinect system certain raises the bar on how machines can see the world.  The AR smartphone gives us a tiny magic window into the data driven world, while the AR console brings the magic to our living room.

The announced games for Kinect are pretty limited to a racing game, an adventure game involving white water rafting, sports, and dancing.  The only brand name was a Star Wars game that seems like a perfect fit for Kinect and a virtual pet game Kinectimals that gives us the only true augmented reality experience like the PS3 EyePet. The system is due out in November, just in time for the holidays.


Playstation Move and EyeToy

PlayStation is rightly packaging the Move controller along with the EyeToy (for promotional as much as technical reasons.)  While it doesn’t quite compare to the gesture based Kinect, it is a step forward.  However, if I were buying a system for its AR inclusion, the Kinect wins hands down (pun intended.)

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First Image Processing iPhone AR App in AppStore

Posted on June 14, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

Now I can’t guarantee that it’s the first, but it’s a start.  The Faces app comes from Pixelshed and is available in the AppStore right now.

Make fun of your friends by putting new faces on their heads and share these images via email and Facebook.

Point your iPhone towards your friend’s face and a magical overlays will appear on the screen. Change the overlay by swiping left and right on the screen.

Faces is the very first app that takes advantage of cutting edge Augmented Reality (AR) technology on your iPhone.

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Five Reasons Why the iPhone 4 Was Made for Augmented Reality

Posted on June 9, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

The last year we’ve had quite the love/hate relationship with Steve Jobs and his beloved iPhone.  Like a pimple-faced love struck boy with a handful of daisies in our hand, we felt the fools when the OS3.1 stood us up at the local Burger Barn.  I mean, we weren’t asking to go steady, just a date and maybe a kiss on the cheek in the form of video access API.  Afterwards, we crossed out Steve Job’s picture in our yearbook and shot spit wads at him in hallway when we got the chance.

Now it looks like the new iPhone 4 and iOS4, will make us love sick again.  Though this time we’re a little older and not as pimple laded as last year.  Augmented reality is growing up and we have more to offer, and in return, so does the new iPhone and OS as Steve Jobs announced the details on it yesterday.

1) Video Access API

Clearly this is the number one based on the long and fruitless flirtation during 2009.  With this change, the iPhone can finally become a real AR smartphone using video feed instead of lame picture frame workarounds.

2) Dual facing cameras

We thought the iPad might have it but we picked the wrong Apple product.  Dual facing cameras can turn the iPhone into the same weird tool that the webcam is, replacing our faces with cows, Iron Man, or Transformers.  I hope developers can learn to be more creative than that.

3) Apple A4 Processor

Playing with video requires more power.  This new chip will raise the ceiling on potential applications.  ‘Nuff said.

4) Gyroscope

This one caught me by surprise, and a pleasant one at that.  With the gyroscope, the iPhone can now understand the world without having to actual see anything.  With the accelerometer it can essentially sense gravity, giving the iPhone an easy way to tell where the floor is.  This should greatly improve those shooter games that left zombies and fires floating in free space.  If I were a developer, I would be quite excited about this addition.

5) 5 Megapixel HD Camera

While this isn’t better than the Droid eight-megapixel and only matches the Nexus One five-megapixel, it improves from the previous number of three.  While this isn’t a huge upgrade, it does help our vision system see what’s going on.

A few months ago, I had pretty much decided not to get an iPhone when my wife’s contract was up, but with these changes I think the iPhone is back in the hunt.  As new demos of AR apps start hitting YouTube, I think we’ll all get a better sense of how good the new iPhone is going to be for augmented reality.  I for one, hope we grow to have a wonderful relationship with full benefits, if you know what I mean.

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