Author: Christine

Categories
Events Internet of Things

Makers at IoT ZH

The second meeting of the Internet of Things Zurich meetup group was an enormous success! In the audience, we had an excellent mix of artists, programmers, Do-it-Yourself-ers, students and academics, people from businesses interested in learning about IoT.

Now what?

Growth. To say that this group is large would be an exaggeration because Switzerland is a small country and we only began in earnest a few weeks ago. But by Swiss standards, this group of passionate people, the "makers" of the local IoT industry, is respectable (61 as of this morning). And there were over 50 people gathered in the ETHZ venue to learn from entrepreneurs. 

Experience. Few have it and everyone wants it. The goal of this session was to hear from those with experience in the IoT about lessons learned to date.

We began with great content from Cuno Pfister, Oberon microsystems (slides), Thomas Amberg, Yaler.net (slides) and Simon Mayer, not technically an entrepreneur (he's a PhD candidate at the ETHZ Distributed Systems Group) but a real good guy who shared with us what's happening on the Web of Things side (slides).

During his introduction, Cuno framed the world (loosely speaking) as those who are "corporates" and have a set of characteristics that make them risk averse, although they have (or perhaps as a result of their) resources, and the "tinkerers" those he called "makers." Makers are characterized by:

  • no legacy business models
  • focus on personal growth
  • generating new ideas
  • cost-sensitive (low financial resources) and work on their projects in their spare time
  • attracted to and frequently adopt open systems

After the talks, I took a poll of the people in the room to ascertain the composition of this community. Approximately 30% of us are already "makers" in some fashion. We didn't define this or require people to demonstrate that they have this status through an exam! Presumably even those who are already experimenting want to improve. Of the remainder, many–over half of the room–aspire to become "makers."

With this in mind, there's an excellent opportunity to organize more community meetings and to explore other programs that will permit people to get proficient with IoT tools quickly and with limited resources. I'll be talking to our local experts and more makers in coming weeks to see what we can do about fulfilling this desire and addressing the needs.

Categories
3D Information Augmented Reality Internet of Things Research & Development

Clear Directions Ahead

During the 2011 Geneva Auto Show (almost a year ago), BMW shared with enthusiasts its Vision ConnectedDrive prototype. "Assisted by sensors integrated into the headlights and taillights, a head-up display on the ConnectedDrive Concept can list information on the road ahead in a 3-dimensional format."

Augmented Reality for drivers was also a feature of last week's Consumer Electronics Show. For example, Pioneer Electronics revealed a display that mounts in place of or below the rear view mirror of any model car to project road information for quick consultation without obscuring the driver's view of the road. The photo below is from the CNN article covering Mercedes-Benz's introduction of what it terms "the Future of Driving.

While everyone acknowledges that a date for commercial release of these technologies has not been set, the direction of research and development in the automotive industry is clear: more sensors, more mobile connected services for the user/driver, more in the driver's field of view. More and better sensors are already available for those who can pay the premium price. Also, in an automobile where miniaturization and low power consumption are not as important as in a smartphone, we can anticipate more advanced and more accurate sensors, including cameras, to appear.

Furthermore, the justification of new gadgets on the basis of driver and road safety appeals to many constituents from the individual driver to the regional and national transportation authorities who have (potentially) fewer troubles with traffic congestion. I haven't read anything about the policies or regulations treating the use of AR in cars, but I wouldn't be surprised if some were introduced.

One of the enabling technologies for these applications is the pico projector. MicroVision is one of the early providers of these technologies, while a neighbor, also in the state of Washington, the Human Photonics Laboratory at University of Washington is another. Other enablers are the variable opacity screen materials (aka Smart glass) which can be manufactured today. And to receive information from the cloud, without interfering with the user's mobile phone service, and perhaps using different protocols, we may have machine-to-machine (M2M) mobile communications. In the case of a high end car, the extra radio (its cost, its weight or power requirements) are not obstacles.

Categories
Internet of Things Social and Societal

What makes a community?

There's thousands, perhaps millions of posts about community development best practices, especially since this has become a career track for many. I'm not a trained professional community manager but have accumulated enough experience in the domain to feel that I can start a community.

A few months ago I founded the Internet of Things Barcelona and the Internet of Things Zurich meetup groups in order to contribute to and participate in a global network of folks also interested in IoT projects: Madrid, New York, London, Amsterdam (are there others I've missed?). Both IoT-BCN and IoT-ZH had their first meetings in the first week of December 2011.

I love Barcelona and it is definitely a hot bed of innovation but this group had not had time to ramp up before our meeting. We were only 5 dedicated and curious people who did not know one another and we just had a casual chat about what we think Internet of Things will become, although none of us had any hands on experience.

In Switzerland, the first IoTZH meeting was in Bern. It was co-located with the Mobile Monday Switzerland 28th meeting. The room was full to capacity and many of the attendees were people with whom I've crossed paths in the past 7 years in Switzerland. Although it really wasn't the case, this felt like a room of my closest friends and we shared out pleasure while listening to the well-prepared content delivered by the five invited speakers. The venue is also easy to access and warm. Based on the success of the IoTZH meeting I contacted several folks and we organized our second meeting in Zurich.

Based on these experience, and many others I've had in the past 20 years doing evangelism through community development, I suggest that there are a few key requirements for a community to feel alive and to grow:

  • a variety of people who share an interest but from different levels or points of view. Although it's rare to have this, if everyone is at the same level, there's not a feeling of potential for personal or professional growth. The topic of interest can be broadly or narrowly defined. I really like communities in which there's a balance of academic people (students, faculty or researchers) and people with business backgrounds and interests.
  • critical mass is another key ingredient that really distinguishes a community from just a "group". There's not a magic number for all communities, but for communities sharing a technology interest, regardless of whether they are meeting face-to-face or virtually, the number is close to 100. More is better!
  • novelty is another component that certainly helps a community. What I mean is that the members feel that they are part of something that's not easily repeatable. New topics to be discussed, new problems to tackle, new speakers, even new meeting places which involve a bit of risk. Novelty helps members feel the adventure with each phase and, for many, that's enough reason to return.
  • finally, at least one person or a small group must feel personally responsible for the care and nurture of the larger group. Without a lot of love and devotion, beverages and food for those that meet in person, a community doesn't function well. But there's also logistics: a meeting venue, invitations, a hashtag and a twitter handle. The founder or leader doesn't have to live in close proximity to others but needs to feel passionate and, in this situation, members usually respond.

It's getting easier, with tools on the Web, to form, to nurture and to participate in communities. That said, they don't have to be permanent. If a community lacks one or more of the components above, it's time for it to close, quietly or with a splash!

Categories
2020 Augmented Reality Social and Societal

Travel in 2020

Many of the use scenarios for Augmented Reality involve a person arriving in a new environment and wishing there was an instant guide, providing customized, in-depth assistance on demand. This precise use case is one of three described in the Open Mobile Alliance draft requirements document for Mobile Augmented Reality.

To complete the scenario, our technology-savvy traveler is going to need a few complementary products and services. The details were sketchy until I read this new study commissioned by Amadeus, a leading travel technology partner and transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry, and published by The Futures Company.

The report, entitled "From Chaos to Collaboration" details a set of discrete 'enabling' technologies and innovations. For those in a hurry, probably traveling, the companies have conveniently issued the key findings in bullet format (below) and published an infographic (Click on this low resolution version to see the full size version).

Key findings

  1. The next generation of experience: Travel is increasingly about depth rather than breadth of experience. Technologies such as augmented reality, gamification mechanisms and smart mobile devices will transform the travel experience
  2. Automatic transit: Chips, biometrics, long range fingerprinting and near field communications (NFC) can be deployed in a more integrated way to fast-forward how people move around
  3. Payment with memory:  All data on payments made before and during a trip will be integrated, acting as a digital memory of expenditure leading to more personalised services delivering higher value and more profitable relationships
  4. Intelligent recommendation: As technologies make it easier for people to tag and review all aspects of travel experiences, the prospect of personal travel guides and mobile tour representatives will give travellers the tools they need to enrich their experience
  5. Taking the stress out of travel: Intelligent luggage tags and tickets will give greater reassurance whilst m-Health (mobile-Health) applications will allow travellers to manage and monitor their health and wellbeing as if they were at home
  6. The business tourist: Continued emphasis on the wellbeing at work may see the rise of the business tourist which will demand speed and efficiency as well as a home-away-from-home

An AR services developer could spend the rest of this year researching and developing their partner ecosystem for travel-related experiences. From this report alone one could define a fantastic channel strategy and several exciting business models. I wish other use cases for new technology were as well documented and thought out as this!

Categories
Augmented Reality Events News

hARdware Makes the Headlines

Announcements featuring Augmented Reality are numerous at CES this year. When one steps back from the noise, it appears, as it has most of 2011, that the buzz is primarily coming from the hardware side of the ecosystem. In the limited time I have to absorb from the deluge of CES news I can't begin to capture everything, but just consider:

Where are Intel, ARM, NVIDIA, Imagination Technologies and the other important chip vendors with their eye on mobile?

One can argue if Nokia is a hardware or a software company but it's all three: hardware/devices, software/applications and services/navigation. Nokia's City Lens, being demonstrated at CES, is a great example of urban AR. It's not clear which cities will have it or how many POIs there are. It looks like its only available on the Nokia Lumia 900′s at the moment. Uses onboard sensors to change view modes (held flat, the map shows up on the screen, held upright, list view shows up). OK, so it's rotation-aware. I wonder if this uses any Wikitude technology.

A notable exception to this hardware-centric line-up is Aurasma's announcement about its new 3D engine. Adding 3D puts the platform practically on par with Total Immersion and metaio, at least in terms of feature sets. The technology is featured in a video spot on the LA Times Web site. This and another nice piece in The Guardian is great for raising consumer awareness of AR. The Guardian wrote about the pterodactyl flying around Big Ben. And a video showing a prehistoric monster invading Paris.

There's enough AR-related news and excitement in the first three days of this week to fill a month!

Categories
3D Information

Thoughts on Space

Space and Time are the key components of "Spimes". Both are vast subjects in their own right.

The subject of time is one on which I focused heavily during my professional period in social networking. I like to think of social networking as technology for capturing the present to make the past part of our future. In the decade prior to that (1993-2004) when I concentrated on all forms of collaboration, time was also a key element, since collaboration can be synchronous (in real time) or time-shifted.

Now I am studying the many dimensions of space. It's huge. Maybe even more complex than time.

To organize some of what I'm learning in a framework, here are my simple declarative statements on Space.

  • Space is 3 dimensional. So I'm learning about companies that focus on 3D, and seeking to work with those who have 3D models and would like to have them provide value to citizens and/or customers. And, space is actually 4 dimensional because it changes over time.
  • Space is what humans and all mass occupies and passes through when moving. It is deeply associated with all human perception, but especially sight, touch and sound. This takes me in the direction of studying navigation and positioning technologies. Lots going on in that field today.
  • Space is a key characteristic of both real world and virtual worlds.
  • Space is indoor and outdoor, hence, navigation and positioning need to work on both.

I'll add more to this list as they occur to me.

Categories
2020 3D Information Augmented Reality Social and Societal

Reality TV in 3D

I haven't regularly watched television in nearly 8 years. There isn't a television in my home or my office and when I'm near a television, it doesn't occur to me to turn it on. I am seriously out of touch with what this industry has to offer but my life doesn't lack content. It is just filled with media that I'm choosing to watch or to listen to, when there's time and interest. And, I don't use a terminal that has "channels" in the old fashion broadcast television style. 

I'm certainly not alone in making media choices on a daily or hourly basis via a device other than a TV set. In fact, the whole Web 2.0 and social media movement has provided entertainment "on demand" and just-in-time informational outlets for huge segments of society. And some televisions are already Internet-connected terminals capable of much more than only showing broadcast content.

Many consumers in 2020 will be buying and regularly using devices first introduced this year at the International Consumer Electronics Show. According to an IEEE Spectrum article on the upcoming CES, television is going to be prominently featured among the 2012 edition's announcements. Television sizes and resolutions continue to grow. But this year, as in the past two years, the theme is 3D TV. Manufacturers of displays and televisions are steadily improving what they provide for those who want to watch 3D content. The problem, some believe, isn't the idea that we need 3D, or that there is a shortage of 3D content. It's the glasses. We need solutions that don't require glasses. Stream TV's glasses-free Ultra-D 3D technology is among the popular tech topics for the past three weeks.

Perhaps one of the reasons that people are enamored with 3D is that it mimics reality, the real world. If we are looking for realism, perhaps we also want realistic content. Reality TV has grown and is not showing signs of going away. Unfortunately, from what I've seen of it, Reality TV doesn't have much to do with real Reality.

Reality TV in 3D is getting closer to what might be possible using one of the other hot segments on display at CES this year: eyewear for hands-free Augmented Reality.

Who says glasses are the problem? I and several billion other people wear glasses daily. At least a dozen companies, including Vuzix, the most well-known name in the segment, will show their latest eyewear at CES. While it will show off a lightweight dual-screen model, Vuzix has already disclosed that the next optical see-through displays they will release in 2012 will be monocles, not as shown in this illustration.

In addition to using such appliances to display digital content over the real world (AR), extending them with a couple of cameras (particularly dual cameras for stereoscopic capture) could give us Reality TV in 3 dimensions with a first person point of view. Imagine that you could tune into the life of a famous person or an animal, seeing the world from their eyes. Could this be reminiscent of the feeling we get from following prolific people on Facebook or bloggers ("life bloggers")? Only, in the scenario I'm proposing, text and photos would be replaced with a live stereo video and audio feed. Will this redefine what people consider to be entertaining or boring?

Will this be television in 2020 or just an ordinary pair of glasses?

Categories
Internet of Things Social and Societal

Do you believe (in IoT)?

Larry Smarr’s early December article in the New York Times, An Evolution Toward a Programmable Universe, poetically explains how over the next ten years we and everything around us will be connected. The potential societal, economic and health benefits of the Internet of Things come bursting out of Smarr’s paragraphs like from a pastor on the pulpit. While I’m firmly persuaded that such benefits are possible, I also anticipate that there might be risks.

Another example of the NYT’s campaign to raise public awareness of the IoT was published on December 17. The Internet Get Physical rose to be most popular article of the day (or week, I’m not sure). As the author, Steve Lohr, points out, the Internet of Things is relevant to the general population because it can have an impact on both the health of our planet and business health.

Across many industries, products and practices are being transformed by communicating sensors and computing intelligence. The smart industrial gear includes jet engines, bridges and oil rigs that alert their human minders when they need repairs, before equipment failures occur. Computers track sensor data on operating performance of a jet engine, or slight structural changes in an oil rig, looking for telltale patterns that signal coming trouble.

Sensors on fruit and vegetable cartons can track location and sniff the produce, warning in advance of spoilage, so shipments can be rerouted or rescheduled. Computers pull GPS data from railway locomotives, taking into account the weight and length of trains, the terrain and turns, to reduce unnecessary braking and curb fuel consumption by up to 10 percent.

Thomas Friedman’s thought piece early this week about technology (and network-connected things) in cities (smart cities) is asking readers (especially those in the GOP) to consider how technology innovation produces employment and fuels economic recovery.

When taken individually, each of these is beautifully formulated. Together they read like a hymn book of future (particularly IoT) technology.

I point out the trend because I wonder what is behind it, and what readers who are not following this field closely, but who closely take in every NYT feature and editorial, think of these repeated praises. Is there an element of faith in the goodness of technology resembling the faith some place in God? Have there in the past been similar, concentrated efforts to promote one technology sector as the savior of the planet? Are readers reassured by the thought that technology is going to come to their rescue? Will the general public be disillusioned if (when) such benefits take longer than predicted to materialize?

Categories
Research & Development Standards

Virtual Worlds and MPEG-V

Virtual Reality is not a domain on which i focus, however, I recognize that VR is at the far end of Milgram's continuum from Augmented Reality so there are interesting developments in VR which can be borrowed for wider application. For example, Virtual Reality has a long history of using 3 dimensionality, from which AR practitioners and designers have much to learn.

I'm particularly attentive to standards which could be shared between VR and AR. The current issue (vol 4 number 3) of the Journal of Virtual World Research is entirely dedicated to the MPEG-V, the standard developed in ISO/IEC JTC 1 SC 29 for Virtual World (ratified one year ago, January 2011).

This journal is the most comprehensive resource I've found on the standard. It is written and edited by some of those leading the specification's development including:

Jean H.A. Gelissen, Philips Research, Netherlands
Marius Preda, Insitut TELECOM, France
Samuel Cruz-Lara, LORIA (UMR 7503) / University of Lorraine, France
Yesha Sivan, Metaverse Labs and the Academic College of Tel Aviv-Yaffo, Israel

I will need to digest its contents carefully. Not much more to say about it than this at the moment!

Categories
Augmented Reality Policy, Legal, Regulatory

Spimes and the Law

Until a technology (or suite of technologies) reaches a critical mass market "mind share" (defined as there's high awareness among those outside the field but not necessarily mass market adoption), there's little attention given to legal matters. Well, the big exception I'm aware of in the domains I monitor is the attention that mobile network operators give to what goes over their infrastructure. Their sensitivity is due to the fact that operators are, under national regulatory policies, responsible for how their services are used and abused.

Although spimes are too diverse to be recognized as a trend by the mass market, Augmented Reality is definitely approaching the public consciousness in some countries. One of those is the United States. AR is on several 2012 top technology trend lists (post on Mashable, BBC ran a four minute video piece on AR in New York City during a prime time TV news magazine, hat tip to Brain Wassom for this one).

With over 50% of the US cellular users on smartphones (according to Flurry report quoted on Tech Crunch on December 27, 2011), and a very litigious society, Americans and American firms are likely to be among the first group to test and put in place laws about what can and can't be done when combining digital data and the physical world. In June 2011, during the third AR Standards Community meeting, an attorney practicing geospatial law in the US, Kevin Pomfret, spoke about the potential legal and regulatory issues associated with AR.  He identified the potential liability associated with accidents or errors during AR use as one of the issues. Pornography and content for "mature audiences" was another area that he highlighted.

This week, Brian Wassom blogged about legal topics that he believes will be important in 2012. Below are my responses and thoughts about the points made in Wassom's post.

1. The first Licensing Model for AR Content. I'm a stickler when it comes to vocabulary. Although often used, the term "AR content" is a misnomer. What people are referring to is content that is consumed in context and synchronized with the real world in some way.  In this light, there are really two parts to the "AR content" equation: the reality to which an augmentation is anchored, and the augmentation itself.

Wassom's point is that, in 2012, a business model around premium AR content will be proven. I hope this will happen but I don't see a business model as a legal matter. There is a legal issue, but it is not unique to AR. There certainly are greedy people who cross the line when it comes to licensing rights. Those who own the information that becomes the augmentation have a right to control its use (and if it is used commercially with their approval, to share in the proceeds). There's never been any doubt that content creators, owners, curators and aggregators all have a role to play and should be compensated for their contributions to the success of AR. However, when information is in digital format and broken down into the smallest possible unit, what is the appropriate  licensing model for an individual data field or point? How those who provide AR experiences will manage to attribute and to license each individual augmentation is unclear to me. Perhaps the key is to treat augmentations from third parties the way we treat digital images on the web. If the use is non-commercial, it can be attributed, but there is no revenue to share. When the use is commercial, in "premium AR experiences," the entity charging a premium fee must have permission from the owner of the original data and distribute the revenues equitably.

2. The First Negligence Law Suit. Wassom believes that people whose awareness of the physical world is impaired by augmentations so completely that they are injured would feel that they can put the blame on the provider of the AR experience. He's got a point, but this should be nipped in the bud. I think those who provide platforms for AR (applications or content), should begin their experiences with a terms and conditions/disclaimer type of agreement. It may take one negligence or liability suit to drive the point home, but over time we will all be required to agree to a clause which releases the provider from responsibility for the actions of users. Why don't people publishing AR experiences preempt the whole problem and introduce the clause today?

3. First Patent Fight will be over Eyewear. I'm following the evolution of hands-free AR hardware and agree that it is not going to be much longer before these are commercially available. Nevertheless, it will require that more than 100,000 of these to be sold before it will be worth anyone's time and money to go after the provider of the first generation of eyewear for consumer use. In my opinion, it will take several generations more (we are already in the second or third generation) before the technology is sufficiently mature to be financially viable. So by that time, a completely different cast of characters will be involved. Why would anyone with patents in this area want to stifle the innovation in hands-free AR in 2012 with a patent fight?

4. Trademarks. I'm looking forward to the day when the term "Augmented Reality" completely disappears. If there begins to be trademark claims around the term in 2012, so much the better! Then people will begin to drop the term to refer to what will be commonplace anyway and we can accelerate the time necessary to just accept that this will be a convenient and compelling way to live.

5. AR frowned upon by family values and fundamentalist religious groups due to explicit content. It is clear that adult content drives the growth of many technologies and AR is unlikely to be different so I agree with Wassom that the adoption of AR in this market is inevitable. It is likely to provide a very clear business case for premium content so, from a financial point of view, this is all good. Having pedophiles using AR would not be surprising and certainly not desirable, but I don't think the technology making AR possible will be treated any differently from other technologies. It's not the technology to blame. It's human nature.      

Categories
3D Information Innovation Research & Development True Stories

What will your next gesture invoke?

When Alvaro Cassinelli, the winner of the 2011 grand prize at Laval Virtual, the largest annual Virtual Reality conference, was asked by the Guardian what motivated him to develop a platform using Augmented Reality and everyday objects to represent a user's request, his reply revealed something to which we should all pay attention.

Cassinelli said "non-verbal communication was (and still is) the most reliable device I have when I want to avoid ambiguity in everyday situations." He was referring to the fact that as a South American living in Japan, there are many times when communication is unclear.

One doesn't have to be living with cultural and linguistic barriers to need gestures. I learned the value of technology-assisted non-verbal communications 20 years ago. During one of my first sessions using a personal videoconferencing system in my home office with a client who was then working at Apple, his words and his gesture did not align! He said "maybe" in response to a recommendation I made, but the posture of his head and the position of his hands said "no way." This was an "ah ha" moment that convinced me how valuable technology could be to share non-verbal communications when meetings involve a remote participant.

In 2004, when I started working with the partners of the EU funded (FP 6) Augmented Multiparty Interaction project, one of the objectives of using computer vision was to analyze the non-verbal communications in gestures and to compare these with the spoken words during a business meeting. One of the conclusions of the project's research was that computers can detect when there is a discrepancy between verbal and non-verbal signals, but they cannot determine which of the two messages is the one the user intended to communicate.

If and when gestures become a way of communicating our instructions to a digital assistant, will we all need to learn to use the same gestures? or will we individually train the systems watching us to recognize the gestures we designate? These are a few of questions I raised in the position paper AR Human Interfaces: The Case of Gestures. I don't have the answers to these questions, but I'm certain that it will take multiple disciplines working together over many iterations to get us to an optimal balance of standard and personal gestures, just as we have in other forms of communication.

Cassinelli won a prize for innovation and I'm confident that he's on to something, but it will be several more years before gestures are reliable for man-machine interfaces.

Categories
Business Strategy

Making 2012 Count

Although anyone can say they will, in practice, it's not easy to change–yourself or others. Today provides an opportunity to examine how we would like to change. One of the great marketing bloggers, Chris Brogan, began 2012 by announcing his three personal words for 2012: Temple. Untangle. Practice.  Here are his three words for 2011. The problem I have with the Brogan approach is that it's difficult to determine when one has completed these!

Experts agree that the idea is to develop good habits and to stick to them. My new professional goals for the next 12 months can be expressed in declarative sentences that will require my acquiring new knowledge (some of it through repetition) and applying it, habitually. In addition to maintaining the most fruitful of my current activities, in 2012, I will:

  • learn conversational German sufficiently well to be able to understand when people are speaking about a topic that is of interest to me
  • learn how to manage Word Press themes according to community best practices and, using this new skill set, improve this and my other sites, including a complete redesign of my professional Web site
  • add three new companies to any of my digital industry landscapes per week
  • author (or collaborate on) at least one position paper (or other similar in depth, thought-provoking work) per month and,
  • post to this blog at least four times per week.

Aiming for these goals and keeping to these habits in 2012 will be valuable in both my professional and personal life, and the world will smell like this bouquet of roses. Happy 2012!