augmented.org

The first AR Developer’s Camp (AR DevCamp) will be held in California next weekend. The organizing committee for the gathering put up a website under www.ardevcamp.org and I will just quote the bullet points for your convenience:

The first Augmented Reality Development Camp (AR DevCamp) will be held in the SF Bay Area December 5, 2009.

After nearly 20 years in the research labs, Augmented Reality is taking shape as one of the next major waves of Internet innovation, overlaying and infusing the physical world with digital media, information and experiences. We believe AR must be fundamentally open, interoperable, extensible, and accessible to all, so that it can create the kinds of opportunities for expressiveness, communication, business and social good that we enjoy on the web and Internet today. As one step toward this goal of an Open AR web, we are organizing AR DevCamp 1.0, a full day of technical sessions and hacking opportunities in an open format, unconference style.

AR DevCamp: a gathering of the mobile AR, 3D graphics and geospatial web tribes; an unconference:

• Timing: December 5th, 2009
• Location: Hacker Dojo in Mountain View, CA
• Sponsorship: Current Sponsors WE’RE LOOKING TO HAVE A GREAT EVENT AND THAT DOES REQUIRE SOME HELP,contributions will cover basic costs of food/drink etc.
• Registration and Attendance: AR DevCamp interest list (and sketching ideas for other events elsewhere!)
• Meta: @ardevcamp #ardevcamp

Be there and be square! (Just kiddin.) :-)

Hey there, seems like after a great AR summer and lots of news in late late summer, yielding and climaxing in the great ISMAR in Florida, we finally hit the summer slump for AR in 2009. Mostly new ads are popping up and some minor issues, but no revolution these days (well, it can’t happen all the time! ;-)). So I just wanted to update you on a few things I followed and like to share to pass the time between Thanksgiving’s and Santa Claus’:

• Digital Binocular
  The team at MindSpaceSolutions completed a great version of the augmented binocular idea. You might have seen this before, maybe with Fraunhofer Institute in Germany or with VICOMTech in the Basque Country, but this installation seems to beat them all (as far as I can judge from movies, haven’t seen it live) by two things. First, they overlay not only cheap 3D geometry or text but rather movie-real looking productions of augmented objects/persons. Due to the hardware tracking (you move the binocular physically and it gives you perfect angle rotation information) I’m pretty sure the overlay is accurate and fast (a delay would destroy everything even with the biggest and greatest Emmerich-like visuals). Feedback is appreciated if you’ve seen it live. :-) And, second for a great big deal, they produced all production in stereo and as it’s a binocular and not a monocular you expect depth vision! See below.

• SAP HMD Setup
  SAP TV showed actually a while ago a video where you can see their idea of an aided consignment/repair/work hall task with AR. You can see their current state of the art HMDs. Here, they only offer location relevant information on the screen and no “true” AR-overlay. Of course, you don’t need it in this scenario. Just wanted to show you for the current status of a mobile approach (backpack, HMD).

• SINLA - another AR browser

  

  SINLA joins the circle of AR browsers. It still does not look that professional as wikitude, layar or junaio, but it’s worth mentioning, since it’s a research project at German University of Oldenburg, started during a master thesis. The project, sponsored by European Union, wants to evaluate usage of additional information (otherwise not seen by the user) in mobile device environments. Expect paper releases to follow. :-)

• Projected AR concept
  See another demo made with Adobe After Effects showing the concept of an augmented desktop, where you can easily use the same surface you work on with pen and paper for digital content. Nice watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq8Aa4AJ0J0
• AR gaming fun - Spads and Fokkers - AR-Race
  As my fellow AR bloggers posted before, there is a nice AR game floating around on youtube, showing a dogfight air game, where the user “may exploit in order to control the planes, using a brain-computer interface.” Well, I doubt that, but I just though, hm, maybe people don’t click much around on blog sites, so I wanted to point to my early student day’s project, where I also implemented a AR game: you could fly a spaceship through a level of gates and obstacles and fight against enemy drones. The great thing about the concept was that you could freely reposition and change the level items, yielding in always-new-levels, depending how you put the markers or where you are. I think it’s worth an inspiration, since it is much more than just a VR game on a marker! :-) But you had to fly with a joystick, sorry. ;-) Find more out about it in my projects description and see below:

Also, you might want to take a look at the AR sound mixer for your DJ needs, the latest issue of Esquire showing off with AR or follow the German student’s protests against cuts in education funding with the latest layar layer. :-)

Well, now it doesn’t seem too much of a summer slump anymore. Enjoy! :-)

Just a short note. Today, metaio relaunched their website for their mobile social browser called junaio and made the app available in Apple’s AppStore.

From metaio’s press release:

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.

As I reported earlier, junaio integrates with existing social websites, another snippet:

Unlike other applications that attempt to create new social networking communities, junaio
is designed to tie existing platforms together with augmented reality based social
interactions. Users can insert an (animated) 3D object into a photo taken with their iPhone
and upload it to Facebook, or augment images that others have posted. The technology
will soon be available on other smart phone platforms such as Android and Symbian.

I think all the mobile AR browser companies smell a rat and when 2010 more and more people grab a new phone, being a smartphone with always-on-internet, we will see another leap forward. Global players join the circle and for instance we saw Nokia joining in on augmented reality going public with their point & find idea in March, blossoming now and offering more apps for their approach.

So, now, grab your smartphone and try it out. That’s what I will be doing, so expect an update soon. :-)

Just wanted to point you to another demonstration of mobile augmented reality explained. New Zealand radio station Alpha96.1 did a short feature on the HITLab, who are researching in AR for a long time now. The clip is a short insight for any newbie to AR and they talk about the usage of AR on mobile phones. Due to my recent interview with German computer magazine PcPraxis on mobile AR I thought I post this as a kick-off for freshmen. Actually, I consider this presentation seen at Alpha96.1 a bit scary, especially the last seconds: do we really want to see people running around, checking men or women out, stalking and holding phones up instead of talking to us?

Alternatively I recommend starting with the promotional video of layar to get a nice idea how mobile AR can work here:

To get an idea of an augmented personal ID, providing a virtual business card, take a look at this TAT video:

There are more browsers popping up for android or iphone and you at least have to take a closer look at the fresh junaio and one of the first, named wikitude. Welcome to the world of Augmented Reality!