ARound: You know, for Nokia users

Posted on July 23, 2009 by rouli

[A short apology. A few days ago, in a bout of paranoia, I wrote a short post suspecting that Sequence Point’s ARound may be some kind of malware. I jumped to conclusions due to some intriguing aspects in Sequence Point’s site. I should have contacted the developers before posting, but regretfully I did not. After David Caabeiro of Sequence Point contacted me, I quickly pulled the post, understanding my mistake. Here’s setting the record straight]

Got a Nokia N97 phone and envy all those cool guys with their slick iPhones or Android phones with their cool augmented reality applications? Yearn for the days when Nokia was a leader in mobile AR? Spanish company Sequence Point Software might have the solution for your desires.
Called ARound, this is the Symbian equivalent of Wikitude and Layar. Using GPS and compass readings (though future versions may include object recognition), ARound overlays the video input with points of interest gathered from 3rd party data sources, and provides details on close by landmarks.

Designed to be pluggable, ARound may interest developers as well. David Caabeiro of Sequence Point writes:

Our idea is allowing 3rd party developers to add value at different
levels of the application in a simple way: We realize Symbian is not
the easiest platform to play around so this hopefully makes things
easier for developers interested to include Symbian in their
offerings. The first plugins to be made available for developers will
be the so called “data sources”, which will allow them to integrate
any content (from mashups, etc) into the application. Later some other
plugin details will be made available, allowing further customization
and integration into existing applications. For example, one of the
first goals is adding OpenGL support for those interested in doing
more advanced rendering.

Best of all, a beta version can be downloaded freely, so if you are a N97 owner, go check it out, and share your impression in the comment section.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | 1 Comment »

AR Lite with SREngine Lite

Posted on July 21, 2009 by rouli

This writer’s favorite AR developer, Sein Kanemura, has just posted an English description of his latest mobile application SREngine Lite. Unlike the full blown SREngine, this one does not try to augment a video feed, but rather tackles the simpler task of mobile image recognition. It similar to Nokia’s Point and Find and some other mobile applications, but I find its interface very attractive:

The Lite version makes do without a server (up to 20 images can be stored on the device), doesn’t require GPS or compass readings, so it works on the iPhone 3G as well as on the iPhone 3GS, and it’s purely based on image recognition.

SREngine Lite recently won the Japanese “Next-Generation Communications & Marketing” award under the Future category. And, following the trend, Kanemura promises to “release SREngine Lite SDK for iPhone which allows developers to design own ar app.”.

More details here. Tom covered SREngine Lite a couple of week ago, but I’ve waited for the English translation, mistrusting Google Translate.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 2 Comments »

TAT Augmented ID is Beautiful/Creepy

Posted on July 9, 2009 by rouli

One of the oldest concepts in the mobile AR community is using augmented reality to match a person with his/her identity. The Swedish software and design company TAT just unveiled their own take on this “augmented id” with the aptly named Augmented ID. Using face recognition and tracking technology from Polar Rose, TAT enables you to check up one’s web identity by looking at him through your mobile’s camera, as the following concept shows:

It’s very pretty, but just be sure that before pointing your mobile at some beautiful girl on the street, you could out-run her boyfriend. (via engadget)

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Battle of the AR Browsers

Posted on July 8, 2009 by rouli

Three weeks after its launch, SPRXMobile’s Layar partially opens up its layer creation API to developers. It’s not freely available online (bad decision?), however, interested developers can register here, and may be among the lucky 50 to get access keys to the API. The press release is here.
Meanwhile, Mobilizy (creator of Wikitude) is not keeping silent. They congratulated SPRXMobile on their twitter account, and placed a comment on Layar’s press release:

On behalf of Mobilizy GmbH the developers of the original Wikitude AR Travel Guide we would like to congratulate SPRX Mobile in their efforts to help shape the Mobile augmented reality landscape.

Good Job!

Mobilizy also put this picture depicting Wikitude on the iPhone 3GS, and released the following advertisement video

and commented about AcrossAir’s Tube Locator application, saying “you can tell it is fake if you look closely”.

All this while both SPRXMobile and Mobilizy are founding members in the new AR Consortium. So, am I making a lot of noise out of nothing? Probably, after all I’m a blogger!

Update: Mobilizy just announced that they will let user add their own tags to the world via Wikitude.me and that they open up their API in a closed beta. And thus begins the battle to control the mobile AR world!

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

AR for the Environmentally Aware Shopper

Posted on July 6, 2009 by rouli

This next augmented reality concept , named FoodTracer, comes to us from Italian Giuseppe Costanza, as his final year project for MA Communication Design at Central Saint Martins. And it’s quite an impressive final project!
Aimed to give consumers more information about the food products they are buying (such as their carbon footprint and where they were produced), while minimizing packaging, FoodTracer is a bright idea on how AR can make the world a tad better. Users would be able to access the information that concerns them, compare and bookmark several products, and later examine their shopping history at home. Here’s one of Costanza’s imagined use cases:

When Susan goes shopping in her usual supermarket she knows where organic products are placed so she can quickly pick the right products, but today she went shopping in a new supermarket where products are displayed in a different way, she doesn’t have the time to check on the packaging which product is organic so she uses FoodTracer to easily spot organic apples.

Costanza even built a demo application for the Symbian mobile operating system, using embeded markers and d-touch nice looking markers that hide in the products’ logos, as can be seen in the following video:

Many more details over here.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

AR Goes Underground

Posted on July 3, 2009 by rouli

That is, to London’s subway system. Most tourist facing augmented reality applications are focused on landmarks. But, there’s an even more important issue affecting a tourist’s visit to an unknown city – how to get around. The city’s residents know perfectly well where’s the closest subway station that will serve their needs, but a tourist needs to constantly look at maps and look around herself.
To the rescue comes AcrossAir, a British mobile application development company. They have created a simple, yet useful, iPhone application, that shows you where’s the nearest tube station. When held horizontally, the application behaves quite like a map, but when the phone is tilted upwards, bubbles signifying stations’ presence are overlayed on the video feed. Obviously, this only works on the new iPhone 3GS, since it requires a compass reading.

Here’s some obvious further directions from the top of my head, this kind of app could follow:

  • Add more cities around the world, New York should probably be the first.
  • Add more public transportation options, such as buses and regular overground trains.
  • Add route planning, so the application will also recommend which station best suits your needs.
  • Some real time info will be great, like knowing when the next train is due.
  • Make it work underground (using cellular tower triangulation in lieu of GPS read), so commuters can be advised where to get off a train, and which line should they take next.

So there’s much room to innovate, even in such a niche application.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , | 2 Comments »

IBM Serves an Augmented Reality Wimbledon

Posted on June 18, 2009 by rouli

While SPRXMobile enables you to experience an augmented version of the Netherlands (and the whole world in the the future), IBM has more modest goals in mind. Available from next Monday on the Android store, IBM’s Seer Android Beta will add some AR magic to the Wimbledon tennis tournament. Using it, visitors can find facilities on ground (locating the nearest restrooms), but more impressively, they can “point the phone at a tennis court, find out the court number and also who’s playing and more crucially, who’s winning”.

As with Layar, IBM Seer Android Beta lets you choose between different layers of metadata (and it seems that unlike Layar, one can choose to see more than one layer at a time). Moreover, the not specialized name of this app (i.e. not calling it “IBM Augmented Wimbledon”) suggests that IBM may have more deep interest in augmented reality location based services. Days will tell if my hunch here is correct.

More details can be found here.
(via PicturePhoning.com)

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 1 Comment »

Layar is Out

Posted on June 16, 2009 by rouli

Surely, you have already read about it at Gizmodo, at ReadWriteWeb, or at any other of the millions of websites which reported the news today. However, if you are avid readers of this blog, you already knew about Layar, “the first augmented reality browser” for at least two weeks (see link for further details).

So luckily, all that is left for me to do, is (1) embed this new video demoing Layar:

(2) Quote from the press release:

Mobile innovation company SPRXmobile launches Layar, the worlds first mobile Augmented Reality browser, which displays real time digital information on top of reality (of) in the camera screen of the mobile phone. While looking through the phone’s camera lens, a user can see houses for sale, popular bars and shops, jobs, healthcare providers and ATMs.
…
The premier launch is for the Dutch market. … Layar will be launched per country with local content partners in order to guarantee relevent results for the end user. SPRXmobile is planning further roll-outs, together with local partners, in Germany, the UK and the United States this year. SPRXmobile will continue with regular releases of new layers after each local launch. The Layar application will be available via the Android Market. Other handsets and operating systems are in development with a prime focus on the iPhone 3G S.

(3) Tell you that it will be available tomorrow on the Android Store
(4) And once again wish good luck to Maarten, Raimo and friends from SPRXMobile.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , , | 7 Comments »

Gamaray’s AR Explorer is Online

Posted on June 5, 2009 by rouli

Since one augmented reality framework per week is not enough, here comes another one for Google’s Android. While other Android AR applications provide information about landmarks seen through your mobile’s camera, Gamaray’s AR Explorer shows virtual 3d objects not seen with the naked eye. Obviously, the technology is in its infancy, and it’s quite a bold move on Gamaray’s part to release its application in such an early stage:

Right now, Gamaray is focusing on utilizing their framework for building multiplayer games, the first one being a tank combat game. Founder Clayton Lilly, admits that “For a while we thought of creating a more general purpose AR platform, but I’m concerned that Google may already be developing a first person AR viewer for KML data and 3D models”. I for one root for the smaller companies in this new ecosystem, so good luck guys!

(link)

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 4 Comments »

InVizimals – AR Game for the PSP

Posted on June 4, 2009 by rouli

Yet another quick post, just before I go to (my real) work. Sony is developing its own AR game for a camera enhanced PSP, named InVizimals. A combination of GhostWire and int13’s Kweekies, players have to hunt around their houses for monsters, and later can set the monsters to fight each other. I really like how they combine the player’s real world actions (casting a shadow, shaking the PSP, etc.) in the gameplay.

Here’s the teaser:

and here’s an in game view:

Via GameSetWatch.

Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: , , , | 6 Comments »

« Previous Page — Next Page »