Augmented Reality at CES 2010

Posted on January 6, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

Thursday begins the Consumer Electronics Show 2010, the gadget-head show of the year.  While the Nexus One has all the buzz going into the show and 3D TV will probably be the talk of it, readers of Games Alfresco will want to know what to expect from CES2010 for augmented reality. 

Overall, there’s not going to be any big surprises for augmented reality, but there will be some products that will help further the cause. 

AR Drone

The combination of self-adjusting mini-helicopter and augmented reality interface has turned this little toy into quite the buzz maker pre-show for the device maker Parrot (so much so the website is currently crashed due to traffic.)  The drone has two cameras that can connect to an iPhone or iTouch through a wi-fi network. 

The Drone was introduced Tuesday and attracted the biggest crowd.  This creative application of AR really shows what’s possible using well placed cameras and some ingenuity.  The price or released date hasn’t been announced but it’s expected in late 2010. 

Tablets

Microsoft & HP are expected to release a tablet during the 2010 show while Apple plans to release theirs afterwards.  Tablets are interactive stylish screens that are supposed to be the next wave of portable computers.  Their built-in webcam, wi-fi, processor speeds and portability will give augmented reality the option to upside the “magic lens.”  Redmondpie website has supposed leaked specifications that include a projector which would allow Sixth Sense type AR. 

The supposed iSlate or iPad (really how hard is it to sound like you’ve found leaked Apple information by adding an “i” in front of a random techy word) will need to have GPS, accelerometer, and a compass to truly be AR ready.  Otherwise, the only thing the tablet will be able to do is object recognition and marker-based AR. 

TVs with Cameras

The stealthier possible boon for augmented reality might be in the form infusing TVs with computer sensibilities.  The Skype tool is looking to add webcams to HD TVs for video-calls.  With TVs having wi-fi access, computer processors and downloadable widgets, TV-apps could be a huge market for augmented reality.  The technology would have to be marker and object recognition based, but the stationary setting could allow for creative products like the Sony EyePet without having to fork-out $400 for the PS3.  I’m sure the furry-crowd would love to talk to each other on video-Skype, augmented to look like their favorite animal. 

In general, we’re not going to have an OMFG moment from the CES 2010.  There could be a few surprises similar to the AR Drone, but mostly we’ll grind out more processing power, camera speeds and other un-sexy improvements that will help make augmented reality better.

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What I Want For Augmented Reality in 2010

Posted on January 2, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

I was going to expand on my predictions that Rouli had posted on Games Alfresco because, frankly, they were pretty lame (mine and not the other nine, those were good.)  But decided that there have been enough predictions for 2010.  So instead, I want to go over the things I want to happen in 2010 in regards to augmented reality.   

1. I want the Nexus One phone from Google to be untethered, cheap and make AR apps fun.

2. I want to be surprised by an AR ready HMD.

3. I want to see fun, creative AR games that are across all platforms and come at an affordable price. 

4. I want the AR inspection assist project I’m working on with Metaio to go flawlessly and for it to revolutionize the way we do difficult inspection job at Toyota and make it easier on our team members. 

5. I want Google Goggles to be a database that other programs can use for pattern recognition and markerless tracking.

6. I want to attend ISMAR10 even though its all the way over in South Korea.

7. I want the ISMAR09 presentations to be put up on YouTube so we can see all the great things that happened.

8. I want Apple to free their live video API for better AR on the iPhone.

9. I want to know what Neogence Enterprises has been working on all these years. 

10. I want to continue to make Games Alfresco the hands-down, defacto source for all your augmented reality news. 

So for all you programmers and entrepreneurs working on the latest in augmented reality tech, even though I may put up your YouTube video or link to your webpage and make semi-snarky comments about its usefulness or how its so-2009, I certainly appreciate your hard work.  Unless you were just mailing it in hoping to capitalize on the AR buzz, then you deserve it and then some.  For all of you in the former category, I leave you with my two favorite quotes to keep you going when things get tough:

All courses of action are risky, so prudence is no in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively.  Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth.  Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer. 

   — Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

IT IS NOT THE CRITIC WHO COUNTS: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again…who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. 

   — Teddy Roosevelt

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Apple See-Through Augmented Reality HMD Glasses

Posted on December 29, 2009 by thomaskcarpenter

The January issue of Mac Life sports a fauxtograph of possible Apple augmented reality HMD glasses. It’s hard to know how much of this article is based on concept, but Apple working on an AR HMD would be a huge jumpstart to the nascent technology.

In mid-April of 2008, Apple published a patent for a “Head Mounted Display System.”  The patent shows screens and fiber optics and vision imaging controls.  Would the display use pico projection or utilize OLED displays?  Pico displays could be used right now, but OLEDs might be a year out.

Would Apple make HMD goggle for augmented reality?  Looking back at this 2006 interview on MacSimumNews, we can see that Steve Jobs was already considering it.  Given that he also denies Apple is looking at a HMD practically guarantees they have something in the works. 

Jobs: Yes, you want a nice big screen so that you can see lots of music and you can pick out what you want, versus a tiny little screen. But then again, you want the screen to be small so that you can put it in your pocket. Actually, discovering and buying music on a computer and downloading it to the iPod—in our opinion, that’s one of the geniuses of the iPod. So you can look at changing that—and maybe that will happen over time—but I think the experience you’ll get on a device optimized for putting in your pocket is going to be far less satisfactory than on a personal computer. You may still want to do that [on a small screen] occasionally, but I don’t think it’s ever going to mean that you can not have some other device that is your primary device for buying and cataloguing music.

Swisher: What would solve that? Can it be solved?

Jobs: Rollable screens, goggles you can put on; I don’t know. It’s not on the horizon.

Given Apple’s trademark secrecy, it’s a huge unknown if MacLife’s article is pure speculation or its based on some real knowledge.  We do know that Apple has patented aspects of an AR HMD, so it’s not crazy to think they might come out with one.  With tons of augmented reality applications hitting the market, I can’t imagine that Apple will wait too long to unveil their AR glasses to grab a critical market lead.  All the pieces of the technology are available as we speak and I’m not the only one to notice this (read PatentlyApple).   

Microvision, Vuzix and Lumus are telling us to wait until 2011 for AR HMDs, but if Apple gets involved, we just might see it happen in 2010.

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Augmented Reality iPhone Sudoku Grab

Posted on December 29, 2009 by thomaskcarpenter

I thought the purpose of Sudoku was a time killer and exercise for the brain.  If you’re more interested in having a filled out booklet on the coffee table to impress your friends and family then this augmented reality iPhone Sudoku Grab can quickly analyze the board and give you the answers. 

When AR computing technologies become more ubiquitous, you won’t ever want to let your friends wear their AR glasses during any board game because there will certainly be helper-agents to plan the next move.  And I for one am waiting for the Scrabble-helper so I can quickly figure out what seven letter words I have.

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Live From NYC – Part II: Augmented Reality Developer Camp

Posted on December 7, 2009 by Ori Inbar

If you missed our coverage of the morning – read part I.

Rain turned into snow and a ground breaking discussion was kicked off:

Yours truly proposed an open collaborative game development project: The Big NYC Game – a city wide augmented reality game for New York by New Yorkers.

It would be launched by 2010 June’s Come Out and Play Festival.

Everybody was on board and the ideas kept flowing into the room faster than you could spell: ARDEVCAMPNYC. Wow what a great team!

The discussion consisted of multiple layers:

From technical considerations (what AR engines and devices to use?)

…thru game concepts (learning about AR, teaching how to build AR games)

…and game play (Easter eggs, capture the flag, learn about NYC history)

…and even government relations and promotional activities with local businesses.

Here is a set of slides I captured during the discussion.

If you like the idea and want to join – let us know!

Tish captured the rest of the sessions and took many pictures which can be found on her blog UgoTrade.

Sophia (the organizer of the day) added a quick summary and reference for follow ups.

And if you are wondering what happened at the (bigger) sister event on the left coast (HackerDojo in Mountain View) – here are some snippets:

Mike Libehold (IFTF) summarized the event with these words:

Turnout  for the 12 hour ARdevcamp  at the Hacker dojo was mind boggling. I estimated that at peak, 130-140  people were in and out of the space more comfortable for 70-80.

it was a  barely disciplined massively parallel and fun! dialog  (and party) in 40 discrete sessions, mostly technical and social, with exponentially complex interactions in between all day into evening. We asked everyone to log their session notes on the ardevcap wiki, but the huge crowd flooded the meager DSL connection  from the building, complained they couldn’t post pages.  I haven’t had a chance to explore,  or inspect damages yet.

The mass of expert devcampers  was simply astounding  and uniformly brilliant hackers, mobile techies, mappers,image recognition scientists, 3D, artists, media designers, nav, techies, game designers, a  teacher  a museum guy . . .

The dialog was multi-disciplinary, definitely friendly towards, but not closely focused yet  specifically on  an open ARweb, data interoperability, software and service ecosytems, APIs, rendering and UI conventions. I suspect all of these were discussed in some depth, but but not yet logged.

David Cheney summary of the day

Summary of AR and art session

More Photos

AR is certainly gearing up to start 2010 with a bang!

Next event in NYC is the Augmented Reality New York Meetup – ARNY. Join today!

Filed under: AR Events | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Live from NYC: Augmented Reality Dev Camp

Posted on December 5, 2009 by Ori Inbar

On a rainy Saturday morning, the Canal strip is already busy. Just a block away, a group of passionate (how else would you explain the Sat morning meetup) techies are hauling up  the elevator to Topp’s Penthouse – The Open Planning Project. The coolest work place I have ever seen.

About 20 people are in the room + 10 on Skype (from Europe and the US)
In the spirit of unconference – all the rules are broken in the first 5 minutes…the day is kicked off with a session about PyGo Wave and a discussion about using Google wave (XMPP protocol) for distributed Augmented Reality.

Welcome to the NYC AR Dev Camp. In a few hours a parallel session will start on the left coast in Mountain View.

Next is introductions of the passionistas on location:

Sophia Parafina – Open GEO (and the organizer of the event – thanks!)

Tish Shute – UgoTrade blog + Using Google Wave for distributed AR on the internet
Omer Gunes From NYU MLP –
Steven Feiner –  Columbia Professor for the AR lab
Don Schwartz – Demystifying tech, virtual worlds
Name – Local search, social search
Kate Chapman – web developer FortiusOne
Dimitri Darras – web dev
Ohan Oda – PHd from Columbia – Goblin XNA
Sean White – Columbia, Smithsonian institution
Ori Inbar – Games alfresco author, Founder of Ogmento – maker of AR games.
Dan Leslie – web consulting reflections delta: will launch a loc based social graph analysis tool (iPhone)
MZ – startup to develop a platform to use semantic data to enable virtual worlds
Jon Russek – film production + law + internet. Interested in AR as artistic medium for creativity
Bert Picot – entrepreneur – live entertainment ticketing. learn about AR
Steven Henderson – Columbia – AR for procedural applications
Matthew Pierce – a writer – interested in user experience

Davide Byron – developed the game Spads and Fokkers and code
Chris Grayson – Web developer and marketing consultant
Marco Neumann – KONA
Noah Zerkin – The inventor of the Zerkin glove

Who have I missed?

What shall we talk about?

Sean White volunteers to moderate the discussion, and collcts these topics on the board:
-egalitarian usage – relevance of AR to small businesses
-limitations of mobile devices (handsets) – how to overcome limitations in the near-mid term
-open marker system (database) to be implemented for global use (what role RFID might play?)
-what about voice recognition as input – multimodal (ARXML voice protocol?)
-computer infrastructure for sensor fusion (current apps only use limited sets of sensors) blue tooth?
-create a sound map based on a picture?
(Sean mentions an iphone app for hearing impaired)
-revenue models ?
-use AR for advertising, enhancing existing tech and business models
-Big NY game (location based, social, AR game built for NYC by New Yorkers!)
-where does AR meet traditional motion tracking?
-natural feature tracking
-intersection of AR and semantic web – using AR as basis for formal models on the web
-patent land mines? (GEOVector)

Lots of great topics. Sean proposes to group them into 4 categories and have a vote:

1) Business

2) Standards

3) Tech

4) Apps and games

Surprisingly, business and Apps get the most votes!

Now we are off to a lunch break (Denno Coil playing on the screen). Will continue after the break.

To get a sense how cool this location is – checkout this video (courtesy of Sean White)

Ohan Oda presents “his baby” from Columbia university: Goblin XNA a development tool for AR games based on the Microsoft XNA game development environment. See more info.

Questions range the gamut from -” what does it run on?” (anything as long as it’s a Microsoft platform…) to “how much can it be customized?” (practically anything – it’s open source!)

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Junaio is Available on the iPhone App Store – Can Social Augmented Reality be Fun?

Posted on November 11, 2009 by Ori Inbar

They made it:

metaio, Inc. is proud to announce that junaio – the world’s first social augmented reality platform is now available in the App Store. The application is free and available globally on all iPhones. Users without an iPhone can also edit and share 3D augmented reality images via the online platform on http://www.junaio.com.

junaio is a mobile and online platform that lets users create, explore and share information in a completely new way using augmented reality and location-based content. Users can place 3D objects, Twitter messages or websites into the real world and then share their creations with friends through social networks such as Facebook.

Download from the App Store or Visit the website

I participated in the beta and it was quiet fun.

I took pictures of interesting things in and around my house, and in a few minutes – folks from around the world (mostly Germany…) added creative fun stuff to it.

I like Junaio’s concept of You (stuff you created), Here (stuff people around you created), Now (stuff being created right now). However, it was a bit weak on the Here. I guess no one else in NYC participated in the beta. Hopefully that will change now that it’s on the store.

What I am missing in Junaio is the ability to see my creation (and others) truly overlaid on reality. That is quiet hard to achieve on the iPhone with just GPS and compass. This will get much more interesting when computer vision is used and objects are aligned with your real time view of reality.

In the meantime – congratulations to Metaio and all the best!

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ISMAR 2009: Sketch and Shape Recognition Preview From Ben Gurion University

Posted on October 16, 2009 by Ori Inbar

ISMAR 2009 the world’s best augmented reality event starts in 3 days!

If you are still contemplating whether to go – check out what you might be missing on our preview post.

The folks from the Visual Media Lab at Ben Gurion University in collaboration with HIT Lab NZ are preparing a real treat for ISMAR 2009 participants.

Sketch recognition (already covered in our previous post) is a major break away from “ugly” markers or NFT  (tracking natural 2d images). It is the dawn of user generated content for Augmented Reality, and an intuitive new interaction approach for changing the CONTENT overlaid on a marker. Big wow.

In-Place 3D Sketching

But the team lead by Nate Hagbi and Oriel Bergig (with support from Jihad El-Sana and Mark Billinghurst) is just warming up…In the next video Nate shows how any sketch you draw on a paper (or even on your hand!) can be tracked.

So are you telling me I won’t need to print stuff every time I want to play with augmented reality?
-That’s right! Hug a tree and save some ink!

Shape Recognition and Pose Estimation

But wait, there is more!

Nate says this demo already runs on an iPhone.

And to prove it, he is willing to share the code used to access the live video on iPhone 3.0.
(note: this code accesses a private API on the iPhone SDK)

Ready for the BIG NEWS?

For the first time ever, the core code necessary for real augmented reality “(real” here means precise alignment of graphics overlaid on real life objects) on iPhone 3.0 is available to the public.

To get access to the source code – send us an email.

May a thousand augmented reality apps bloom!

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Red Bull Gives You Augmented Reality Wings and Saves Magazines with Print 2.0

Posted on October 7, 2009 by Ori Inbar

They gave you wings, extreme sports races, and Flugtag – and now they want to save print magazines with the bold concept: Print 2.0.

bullseye

Guess which one of these is a true fact?
1) In 2006, more than 3 billion cans of Red Bull were sold in over 130 countries

2) Red Bull publishes a printed magazine (2 million copies per issue)

3) Red Bull is an Austrian company

Answer: all of the above!
Can’t say which fact is more shocking, but they certainly explain why Red Bull decided to partner with Imagination (an Austrian company) to create a webcam augmented reality experience where:

This magazine sings, dances, flies and even scores a touchdown…

The cover and multiple pages (any page with the Bull’s eye) can be activated by pointing to a webcam thanks to Imagination’s natural feature tracking software.

Try it yourself.

If you don’t have the printed magazine – don’t worry – you can download and print at home.

Or just watch it here…

The magazine editor dives into more autophilia:

PRINT GOES LIVE

It’s not often that a magazine can call itself revolutionary,  but we’re delighted to say this one can.

This very issue of The Red Bulletin takes us from print  to Print 2.0, thanks to the incorporation of some nifty  software known as ‘augmented reality’…the  fun stuff is this: simply by holding the mag up to a computer you can take it ‘beyond the page’ and into the world-wide web. So, for example…[the cover] will link through to a video package explaining exactly how augmented reality can enhance your reading experience in a way you almost certainly never imagined, with music, film, animations and more.
Then turn to page 5 and Red Bull Air Race ace  Paul Bonhomme will give you an ‘as live’ introduction to  the magazine and the world of augmented reality. Head to our Now and Next pages, find the story about Black Gold  on page 20 and do the same again with the mag. Lo, you’ll
find the band’s latest video on the website. Clever, eh?
Further in, you can read about Burcu Cetinkaya and Cicek Güney – the girls putting the glam into rallying – then link to exclusive interviews with them and videos of them driving flat-out… and crashing!
And we’re not done yet, no way. Our Reggie Bush cover story, on page 48, combines with an exclusive mini-movie  of Reggie at home, as he talks to correspondent Jan Cremer, while page 62 will take you right into the pocket-rocket  world of the Red Bull Rookie motorbike racers.
No other magazine has ever tried anything like this,  and we have plenty more ideas for the future. But for now,  just get your magazine and computer primed and prepare  to be amazed…

…And Daniel Wagner certainly shows his skills in the video above…

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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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