Today I’ll offer a small collection of mixed news.
YDreams uploaded a new video of their little AR mascot program. You see a little virtual play buddy running around your room, reacting to your actions and fully occluded by the room’s geometry. Unfortunately we don’t learn if there is an AI controlling the little fellow:
The ConceptLab in New Zealand shows a new way of digital, mixed reality tracing paper. Easily mix the two worlds if you are an artist and want to stick to real paper, but like to have the advantages of the computer era:
In February there will be the next WARM in Graz, Austria. It’s the fifth event, starting of Februar, 24th, with workshops for two days and another two days for skiiing. :-)
The fields of Computer Graphics, Augmented Reality, Computer Vision and Ubiquitous Computing have the potential to be synergistic. However, the overlap and mutual contributions of each area has yet to be expressed and understood. The specialist, immersed in his or her own discipline, struggles to see the “big picture”. The core of the workshop is Augmented Reality and Ubiquitous Computing and we are soliciting presentations from members of each community that illuminate the interplay between the different disciplines and AR.
Another team-up has been defined in the MIRACLE project: the HITLab from New Zealand and the German Fraunhofer institute (FIT) build a research project called Mixed Reality Applications for City-based Leisure and Experience. Location based services, mobile device visual tracking and applications in AR to come!
Spatial Computing and new paradigms for HMI, i.e. human machine interaction, are a huge field of research, that became more and more popular (or let’s say: became more coverage in media during last years). Starting with hand-gestures and iphone-tricks, leading to Windows 7 and multitouch, Surface tables and 3D-cameras for Project Natal… it all comes together as a keyboard and mouse-killer application concept. Combining these more-natural-input ideas with augmented reality goggles could really, really have the biggest impact on the computer world since the internet. Well, even bigger maybe.
I’m also working on HMI optimization for VR environments and that’s why I’m ashamed, that I missed this neat concept video from Phedhex. Thomas at Gamesalfresco dug it up and I must show it to you, too.
It actually is the 2nd part of Phedhex’s series on spatial computing, this time covering shopping as an application example, using AR goggles. He does a great job of postproduction, giving life to his concept. There have been demos before and there is software out there (that e.g. decorates your living room with virtual about-to-buy objects), but this nicely combines glove/gesture interaction with an AR experience and an actual industry scenario. It’s great how the furniture drops to the ground and how easy-to-use the interface appears.
So again… let’s hope for a near-future release of good HMD goggles. :-)
Today just some mixed thoughts on AR and society, guess it’s kind of a blue thursday.
People start discussing augmented reality glasses and their impact on society. Once, everyone has a head-mounted-display (HMD) connected to broadband internet, the world will completely change! 2010 is already being hyped as changing the world. But hohoho, media, slow down please!
Charlie Brooker from the guardian just ripped on augmented reality and the possibility to get rid of homeless people in your eye sight through augmented reality (in this article). It depends on your style of humor if you like his ironic comments. But people keep forgetting that we are still a long way from a perfect overlay! And why do we have to stress these silly negative scenarios? If he would have overlaid the homeless with suit-wearing equals, rather than cartoon characters, he might even start a conversation with a guy from the street “by accident”, thus emancipating/”equalizing” the homeless and bridging social gaps. Sounds better now, hu? ;) Naa, it’s still bad.
Regarding the realistic visual AR deception: there are not only broadband bottle necks or realistic rendering issues to manage today, but much more. The tracking needs to be perfect, the lighting needs to be correct in real-time - and really the biggest problem: the field of view of any HMD is pretty narrow and the hardware is insufficient. The problem comes with the two human eyes and the projection plane. We still don’t have the convincing solution at hand. If we are observing the world through glasses and two cameras (for each eye and thus stereo view) it wil still not be realistic for a long-time period. If the field of view is bigger, that’s only half the way. We experience the problem with all these stereoscopic movies again: the projection plane (the screen) is not the actual focus plane of our eyes, thus giving a headache, plus the HMD cameras don’t toe-in or converge, thus giving us a non-realistics impression of the world and leading to stereoscopic headaches and wrong images again that are out of sync between brain and eyes. Well, I could go on…
Anyway, enough technological mumbo-jumbo, the point is: realism with glasses is a development I’d love to see, but there will soon be no way of tricking people into believing the presented image by 100% through glasses. We can and will gain this effect much sooner with desktop/handheld devices, but not convincingly on our noses for the next 5-10 years, imho. Thus, all these scary cyberpunk scenarios popping up, are way to early. Of course, they sound good in an article, I have to admit.
The only current issue we have to be worried about is: people living among other humans in a society get lonely or by their own will disconnected with everybody around - in favour of connecting to other prefered (virtually present) people. But of course this just continues the series of walkmen, cellphones, mobile gaming devices and is not a problem per se, but needs to be considered by each individual in each situation.
Funny applications to socialize try to counter this development of disconnecting-with-the-real-world, which is actually kind of silly. But that’s how it has always been. One technology may drive us apart, another technology is needed to bring us together again. Here, I just want to appeal to the people’s judgement to focus on the right issues regarding technological development and don’t go buzz wording around. Technology might even be an ice breaker and of course may work to discover new people around you, that share one of your interests, etc. There is a whole bunch of new possibilites, if we do it right!
We are still in the early stages of AR, so let’s don’t do the second step before the first. So, don’t get me wrong, I’m eagerly waiting for Vuzix and other companies to launch their HMDs for every Joe Sixpack. I will be among the first to scream like a child on Christmas once I walk with it through my office. :-) The next thing is a floating screen and HUD for every situation. But we might focus on the implications for these scenarios rather than the ones by realism.
Talking about realism… until we reach a scary future with invading Aliens and reversed augmented reality like in John Carpenter’s They Live it’s still a while to go… But once it’s there, we might be unable to live without it anymore. Quoting from the movie: “wearin’ these glasses makes you high, but, oh, you come down hard“. :-)
Nokia just made another serious step forward exploration of augmented and mixed reality for customers in an outdoor bigger scale. The Nokia Research Center (NRC) has locations all over the world, but the one closest to the biggest movie production hub, aka Hollywood, just started a new pilot in Westwood, a town near the University of California, Los Angeles, tagged the “Westwood Experience”.
Quoting the source (via wirelessandmobilenews), we don’t really get an idea about details, but nevertheless:
The augmented realtiy pilot explores how a narrative, combined with a user’s physical location (context) augmented with digital content as well as social interactions with other “participants” can enhance the user experience…
It is supposed to be an outdoor mixed reality social experience, where story telling elements are blended with real-time exchange of other “players”/”watchers”. The close cooperation (well at least the location lets us assume it) with Hollywood studios, writers or other creative staff sure sounds promising to bring the technology from another point of view to a better content-including event. As the posting linked above mentions, the Nokia pilot is supposed to “provide the media industry with new options and business models”.
Information is still rare on this one, but I already smell more effort into the whole location based gaming and movie-launching viral marketing action thing. There is ongoing research not for the fun of it, but for new money to make…. maybe industry will be able to find a standard protocol for this one (at least this one time) from the beginning on, not only working on Nokia phones.
A really great video to start the week! Etsuji Kameyama found this video, and iirc Keiichi Matsuda made this video for his final year of Masters in architecture, displaying social and architectural implications through augmented reality goggles. Use your overlaid view to guide you through the difficulties of modern life, using gestures and virtual air keyboards (just like in Denno Coil) to interact. Display ads to lower your rent (somehow the look and the small apartment reminds me of the overcrowded cyberpunk LA and the first person view of William Hunter in the ‘93 game Rise of The Dragon). Well, anyway - the below video is a must-watch!
I love the visuals and the small glitches. The concept has a perfect compact script of showing a stupid every-day task of tea boiling, but perfectly shows the new world’s features with a great sense of humor. Especially realistic: showing tons ads in your life to earn a few cents while sacrificing your field of view. I’d love to see an extended version of it one day! Well done. :D
The people at parrot.com took the toy helicopter trend to a new high! Check out their new flavor of a tech trend, combining all the cool buzz items in it: iphone navigation by gyro-sensors, wifi-camera image from the pov of the heli (I don’t even want to know what kind of stalking and spy videos will pop up on youtube) and now they even have augmented reality! :-) Navigate the technology dripping gadget and see an augmented game on your smartphone’s screen.
Below you will see the short excerpt of the augmented reality game! Even multiplayer, when you have two drones flying around!
Well, there is no release date yet and it looks pretty PR - the video (though a good soundtrack!), but it’s fun to watch and fun to dream what will be next and when we will see children writing to Santa for the AR.Drone.
For all of you who love hanging around in social networks, I started an augmented.org fan page, so that you can lean back and let the information float into your inbox. I’d be glad if you become a fan, share your thoughts and take a look at the latest news. I will be posting links to the regular blog posts (that will remain here) and some special facebook-only entries for the insatiable!
Search for “augmented reality blog” and find the logo above or click on this facebook link, if your are logged in with this browser. :-)
just a short entry here - to wish you all a happy new year! I’m looking forward to discovering more great innovations, contributing with my research, finding AR applications and hardware improvements in 2010 and sharing it all with you. To kick off, you might have read all the articles on 2010 predictions mentioned before, last entry was on Ori Inbar’s realistic good and down-to-earth predictions.
Thomas at Gamesalfresco (yes, he joined their forces!) found this article in MacLife showing an augmented reality glasses concept. It sure looks like a neat Apple styled display, that is worth a look and a dream.
I’m pretty positive, that it’s just and really only a concept and a rendering of a HMD, but nevertheless: Apple actually is patenting AR technology related ideas and hardware and it is not too far fetched to see them jump onto it in 2010. I doubt a market release in 2010-2011, but it’s worth the attention. Once there are nice pictures for the CEOs to see, they will more often knock on the doors of their engineers and software staff to actually make it happen. ;-) Well, but as it happened before with the Apple tablet PC, it might just not pass Steve Job’s personal quality control on the first pitch.
