Augmented Reality at the Mobile World Congress

Posted on February 10, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

Next week, February 15-18th, will be the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.  There will be a variety of AR related events during the MWC.

AR Showcase

Christine Perey has organized an AR Showcase on Wednesday, February 17th from 5:00-7:00, so AR companies can demonstrate their services and products to customers.  Designers will also have a chance to compare and contrast their products versus the competition.  The following companies have confirmed their attendance:

You can find the Showcase in the northeast corner of the courtyard.  Announcements for the AR showcase can be tweeted to #arshow (changed for length.)

The Mobile AR Summit is an invitation only event.  If you’re interested in joining, please contact Christine Perey at cperey@perey.com.    More information can be found here.

Other Related Events

Navteq Challenge
Sunday, 14.2.2010
Poble Espanyol, City Hall.
Wikitude Drive is an Augmented Reality navigation system. They are one of the 10 finalists at this years Navteq Challenge.
http://www.nn4d.com/site/global/market/lbs_challenge/about/emea/home/p_home.jsp
Mobile Premier Award in Innovation
Monday, 15.2., 2010 15:00 to 20:00
Petit Palau of Palau de la Musica
Mobilizy is with Wikitude one of the 20 finalists of the “Mobile Premier Award in Innovation”.
http://www.mobilepremierawards.com/
Martin Lechner, CTO Mobilizy, will present.

AR Summit

Wednesday, 17.2. 13:00 to 19:00
Location: to be announced.
Mobilizy CTO Martin Lechner presents a position paper “ARML an Augmented Reality Standard”. ARML is currently being reviewed by W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). At 17:00 there will be a Wikitude Showcase presentation.

We won’t be able to attend – so if you’re there – keep us updated about your experience.


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Insights Into Augmented Reality from Total Immersion

Posted on February 4, 2010 by thomaskcarpenter

Total Immersion leads the augmented reality industry in total projects (around 125 last year and they’re expecting over 250 in 2010.)  They’ve successfully created world-wide campaigns like Coke Zero and the Avatar i-Tag game line.  So when they talk about augmented reality, I want to make sure I’m taking notes.  Iriny Kuznetsova from 2Nova interviewed Nicolas Bapst about the company and their current activities.  The interview was short, but had a few interesting insights.

Total Immersion has done work for the military in creating augmented reality solutions that put simulated objects on the battlefield.  This is a much cheaper alternative to war-gaming with real equipment.  Hopefully this encourages the military to fund more see-through AR HMDs. 

Total Immersion expects that AR mobile marketing will be the new trend in the coming year and shows off a brief demonstration.  They’re converting their PC software to mobile to take advantage of the smartphone growth.  I found Nicolas’ observation about how augmented reality marketing applications give you direct access to your customers interesting.  By moving people from static newspapers to the computer (and especially the smartphone), then they can find out exactly who is interested in their product and then leverage social media to spread the word.  Nicolas explains they doubled time on websites by adding augmented reality content.  I’m curious if this increase will sustain as the novelty of augmented reality wears off. 

Nothing game breaking here, but worth a few minutes if you’re not familiar with the company.

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Who Should Attend The Augmented Reality Event in Santa Clara, CA June 2nd & 3rd, 2010

Posted on February 4, 2010 by Ori Inbar

Over the last 2 years we have seen growing interest in Augmented Reality in various events – panels, dev camps, meetups – and many more. Due to growing demand for knowledge and expertise in augmented reality (AR), a group of AR industry insiders, backed by the AR Consortium have put together the first commercial event dedicated to advance the business of augmented reality.

How is are2010 different from ISMAR…

…previously touted here as the “World’s best Augmented Reality event”?

Well, ISMAR is still the best AR event for the scientific community. If you want to learn about (or present) the latest advancements in AR research – you should be in Seoul this October for ISMAR 2010. However, for the rest of us, who wish to take advantage of AR in practice, in the commercial world, and build a business around it – there was a gaping hole.

That is, until now.

Meet the Augmented Reality Event.

Who’s this event for?

For established and start up AR companies –

For established and start up AR companies (such as Total Immersion, Metaio, Acrossair, Ogmento, Circ.us, Mobilizy, Layar, Zugara, Neogence, whurleyvision, Chaotic Moon Studios, and many more) – are2010 is a stage to showcase their products and services; a venue to form partnerships, learn about latest innovations, and most importantly speak with clients. Bruno Uzzan, CEO of Total Immersion will wow the audience with a cutting edge augmented reality show; Peter Meier, CTO of Metaio, will speak about his companies latest products. Early stage startups and individual developers will receive guidance from Cole Van Nice (Chart Venture Partners) for how to build a successful company in the AR space, including raising funding (from VCs that actually invest in AR), licensing technology and IP, legal aspects, forging partnerships, etc. Christine Perey will speak about the scope of the mobile AR industry today and it’s growth trajectory.

For Developers –

For developers, are2010 is a window into the latest AR algorithms, engines and programming tools. Learn from case studies and post mortems delivered by experienced developers from the leading companies in the space. Blair MacIntyre, director of the GVU Center’s Augmented Environments Lab at Georgia Tech, will speak about his experience with tools and technologies while developing augmented reality games. Daniel Wagner, one of the leading mobile AR researchers in the world, will bring developers into the wonderful world of mobile AR. Patrick O’Shaughnessey, which has lead the development of more webcam-based AR campaigns than anyone else I know – will share his knowledge of what works and what doesn’t. Mike Liebhold, Distinguished Fellow at the Institute for the Future , will speak about Technology foundations of an Open ARweb. Gene Becker, co-founder of AR DevCamp, will dive into augmented reality and ubiquitous computing, and Sean White, a pioneer in Green Tech AR will suggest concrete examples of how AR can help save the planet

For Mobile, Hardware, and Platform Companies

For Mobile, Hardware, and Platform companies (such as Vuzix, Nokia, Qualcomm, Intel, QderoPateo, Microsoft, Google, Apple etc.) are2010 consists of a captive audience to launch and showcase their latest devices, processors, AR glasses, sensors, etc. The best collective minds of the AR commercial world will be onsite to articulate the market demand characteristics and help influence the design of future hardware.

For Clients and Agencies –

For clients and agencies in entertainment, media, publishing, education, healthcare, government, tourism, and many more – are2010 offers everything you need to know about AR: how to leverage augmented reality to advance your brand, attract and keep your customers, and how to build successful campaigns and products that will delight users, including postmortems of landmark augmented reality projects.

Jarrell Pair, CTO and a founder of LP33.tv, will speak about “Augmented Reality in Music Entertainment: Then and Now”, Brian Selzer, co-founder and President of Ogmento, will deliver a crash course for clients and agencies about how to leverage AR in marketing campaigns. Marshal Kirkpatrick, lead blogger for ReadWriteWeb, will share the results of his AR survey collecting feedback from dozens of AR developers and their experience in delivering AR campaigns and apps. Kent Demain, designer of the visual effects in Minority Report, will open our minds with the talk: “Taking Hollywood visual effects spectacle out of the theatre and into your world”. And of course…

For any AR Enthusiast –

Are you an AR Enthusiast? If so, you’re going to feel like a kid in a candy store at ARE, with a soon-to-be unforgettable keynote by Bruce Sterling, demo gallery, exhibitors from leading companies, artists installations from AR artists such as Eric Gradman and Helen Papagiannis, and many more surprises.

If you are into Augmented Reality – are2010 is the one event you should attend this year.

Want to join the event? Early registration is now open!

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Merry Weekly Linkfest

Posted on December 20, 2009 by rouli

Two important events are coming this week –

  1. The conclusion of our little project, collecting augmented reality predictions for the new year.
  2. Christmas

Although the former event is much more important, for some strange reason, I was swamped this week with links relating to the latter. A short list of holiday related AR application that caught my eye since my last post “it’s the season to be augmented“:

Whoof!
Oh right, there were other news this week. Augmented Planet published their results for the first AR people-choice awards. Wikitude won the browsers category, but which participitant won the Chumby? Layar had to withdraw Layar 3.0 from the appstore. Thomas Carpenter has a listing of the worst AR uses this year. A good use is to encourage people to donate blood, like they do in Japan. Total Immersion created Avatar related AR apps for McDonalds and Coke. Wallpaper magazine fancies an AR edition. And another week, another car gets an AR campaign (though it’s technically from June).

The weekly video shows Total Immersion’s implementation of a haunted house in Japan. Thomas wrote a full post about it, while I just tweeted that it looks really scarry:

Have a great week and merry augmented Christmas, if that concerns you!

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Weekly Linkfest

Posted on November 29, 2009 by rouli

Another week passed by, and here we are again, at the weekly linkfest. Today on the linkfest:

This week’s video is of a photo booth at Las Vegas that lets you try different hats. I just find this guy’s reactions really funny (and the augmentation is quite good) [via DMfO]

Have a great week!

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Halloween Augmented Reality Special

Posted on October 26, 2009 by rouli

Following are some AR tricks and treats I’ve collected over the last month, which make me think this Halloween should be declared as the first augmented holiday. Judge for yourself.

First we have the interactive Halloween mirror from Instructables. This little do-it-yourself project will let you and your party guests try out gory and scary masks without spending money or buying makeup. Just remember to turn-off the screen saver before installing it in your living room. (Note, you can stop watching this video after the 1 minute mark, it just repeats itself)

Taking the same face detection approach, Disney lets you become one of the villains from their animated movies. However, their Halloween Time application spice things up by including a mini-game, so kids may find it interesting:

While that Instructables project used OpenCV for face detection, HIT Lab NZ has opted for a simpler solution – just wear a marker on your forehead and turn yourself into a skeleton. On the upside, it’s in 3d. Quite a memento mori moment:

Last but not least, Meijer, an American retail chain from the mid-west bring us what is probably the most attractive Halloween application. Meijer chose to promote its line of products for Halloween by letting visitors to this site try on 3d masks without the need of wearing markers, though you do have to install a plugin from Total Immersion. They even let you record yourself wearing the virtual mask, and make it possible to alter your voice (which according to them is an AR first). Sadly, they don’t let you upload videos to Youtbue, fearing inappropriate videos, and they don’t have a public gallery of user-made videos (which didn’t prevent users to upload about 1300 videos) so I’m left with putting a screenshot:

Here’s a direct link for one of the upload videos, to get a better idea.

Know of any other Halloween related augmented reality project? Tell us about it in the comments.

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Weekly Linkfest

Posted on October 18, 2009 by rouli

Not going to ISMAR :\. Since going to Florida is not an easy trip for me, I would have like to stay there for more than a couple of days. However, my current workload maje such a vacation impossible. I’m sure Ori and Thomas will do a great work covering it. In the meantime, I’ll take the next few days off from blogging, and will be back with my 200th post (woot!). Hope to see you all at ISMAR Korea!
Now, having done with the excuses, here’s the weekly linkfest:

Articles & Videos

Augmented Reality Browsers:

  • Following Wikitude, media favorite Layar is now on the appstore.
  • Following Yelp, Urbanspoon adds an augmented reality view.
  • Lodestone AR Compass is a browser for the great outdoors. Two bucks and it’s on your iPhone.
  • CiviCast (from CiviGuard) is an augmented reality browser for civil services with a lofty goal – “To guide & protect global civilian populations in the event of a crisis through authoritative & reliable information delivery over mobile communications networks.”
  • Can’t even call it a browser, 3d Compass is just a floating compass for Android.

Other

The weekly video is from the Australian band Lost Valentinos. In order to promote their latest single (Nightmoves) they chose (what a surprise) to use augmented reality. We have seen AR clips before and AR used to promote singles as well (see for example this application for Eminem). However, Lost Valentinos found a simple yet ingenious way to use augmented reality – they shot each band member perform the song on its own, match each one with a marker, and let their fans to compose their own videoclip via AR. As the press release says – “From lead singer Nik performing the song atop a user’s shoulders, to the whole band playing the song at the base of the Eiffel Tower”. Try it yourself over here (and btw, don’t search for nightmoves on Youtube from work).

Have a great week!

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Et tu Citroen DS3?

Posted on October 3, 2009 by rouli

(Before you comment, “Et tu” has the same meaning in French as it has in Latin).
The Citroën DS3 joins the ranks of cars that get an augmented reality campaign, thanks to Total Immersion.

Yes, it’s not as lame as other cars AR campaigns, with its little racing game. However, it won’t be spared from becoming the latest addition to my growing petition to stop using AR to promote cars.

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Weekly Linkfest

Posted on September 27, 2009 by rouli

Let’s try to make this week’s linkfest as concise as possible:

  • Tish Shute interviews Bruno Uzzan, CEO of Total Immersion for UgoTrade.
  • Blair Mcintyre: “Has AR taken off? Is it finally here?“, check out the quote below.
  • Augmented reality tested on board the international space station, to help astronauts in maintenance tasks.
  • Another pseudo-AR game whose goal is to catch ethereal creatures – Fairy Trails.
  • Intel looks into augmented reality devices.
  • Total Immersion (those from the first bullet) created a bumping-cars game for Six Flags.
  • You know that AR is really hot when (French) politicians start to use it in their press conferences (powered again by Total Immersion).

AR Browsers:

Ad campaigns of the week:

This week’s quote comes from Blair’s post I’ve mentioned above (and yes, I took it out of context, because I’m a blogger!):

Now that the time is here, now that the promised AR apps can be published in the iTunes store, will they be able to live up to their claims, or will they (and their claims) fade away? I suspect things will die down for a little while. At least, I hope things die down for a while

And this week’s video comes from YDreams, and you have probably seen it before. It’s called Flyar, and it’s an interactive screen saver that shows you Twitter updates with birds that respond to your hand-gestures, a la EyeToy. Yeah, the video makes it clearer:

boof! that was a long one!
Have a nice week!

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Weekly Linkfest

Posted on September 20, 2009 by rouli

It’s time again for the weekly linkfest. Let’s see what else happened this week in the world of augmented reality:

In the realm of mobile browsers:

  • SREngine has a new video out showing its slick user interface.
  • Hong Kong’s Leisure Guide – yet another AR browser (YAARB™)
  • Metaio announces the coming release of Junaio, but doesn’t give much information about what Junaio really is.

And in other news:

  • Total Immersion now enters the world of soccer trading cards, at least in Italy.
  • You can get pregnant without the morning sickness via the wonders of Flash based AR.
  • The Virtec project is a thesis project using AR to teach about Aztec culture by means of a book and a head mounted display.

This week’s video revisits one of this blog’s reoccurring themes, the Transformers (previously here and here). This application comes with the Transformers coming DVD, or as this trailer puts it “Prepare for Augmented Reality! An exclusive 3D Holographic Experience!”:

Have a nice week!

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