Category: 3D Information

This includes all posts that are about anything to do with 3D.

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3D Information Business Strategy

Disrupting How People Collaborate

I've recently co-founded with Ignacio Mondine a new company, Two Way View. Two Way View will develop, manufacture and sell new products that enable "Transparent Collaboration."

Transparent Collaboration is what people do when they use Two Way View products to share, annotate and modify data, co-surf or otherwise have an experience that combines the digital and physical worlds. You might think that I’m talking about Augmented Reality, and there are related concepts, but Transparent Collaboration products don’t overlay digital data on the physical world. They allow me to use the physical world, directly, by way of a light pen or my fingertips on the touch-sensitive screen, to modify the digital world in real time.

The crucial difference and where we are disruptive, as you can see in this video, is how Two Way View products also allow the two people who are sharing and collaborating to see one another in real size, see where the other is looking, and to work together only an arm's length away, just as if they were on opposite sides of the same sheet of glass.

It's the fusion of a digital white board and telepresence system.

No one has proven that people will change their behaviors to use it, but I'm really excited about the highly disruptive technology this company is bringing to market. We might be in the position described by Clayton Christensen in his now classic book, the Innovator's Dilemna.  The giant companies that currently provide telepresence–Cisco and Polycom–are feeling the slow down in sales but, more importantly, they may have neglected to continue innovating within their markets; an upstart with a different approach and higher value comes in.

What lessons can we use from Christensen's masterpiece? I found this short essay on TechCrunch and it helped me to formulate Two Way View's answers with respect to Christensen's four key takeaways:

  1. Understand what is the source of your disruption. Is it a new product or a new way to distribute an existing product? Two Way View will use, to the best of its ability, the existing IT and telecommunication products distribution channels to introduce at least one new product.
  2. Pay attention to opportunities in new distribution channels. Two Way View could also distribute its products outside the traditional telepresence channels and, as an OEM, go through vertical market distribution channels. We will explore it.
  3. Start by marketing to the group of customers for which the incumbent in your industry has the lowest margin or the lowest interest to defend. Two Way View is keen to explore the markets in which large, complex 3D models are common place. The "traditional" data collaboration systems may be inappropriate in these use cases and lack the human element of collaboration between creative professionals.
  4. Remember these lessons when you are at the top. Stay tuned!

We are going to make an impact in 2013!

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3D Information Events

IndoorGML Workshop

In-person meetings with domain experts are extremely important to my continued growth and to my contribution to the advancement of others. In Korea this week I'm enjoying a full week with OGC members and others in the Korean technology community. I could write at length about all that I learned in the first day during the public opening sessions hosted by the Korean Ministry of Land, Transportation and Marine (but my time is so heavily booked I must choose the topics on which I prepare a post carefully!).

The first IndoorGML Workshop, which I chaired today, was worth the many hours of travel. There were approximately 40 people in the workshop. Only 20% of those in the room said that they were researchers. Another 10% said that they considered indoor topics to be the focus of their work. And, only one person raised a hand when I asked if there were any users in the room. That was very interesting considering that, in my opinion, we are all users of indoor technologies every day. Perhaps my definition of a "user" was not clear. 

The goals of the workshop were clear and simple to express: we wanted to brief people about the status of the IndoorGML specification and to hear from six invited speakers about what they are doing that could benefit from IndoorGML or contribute to the greater utilization of IndoorGML. Having clear goals doesn't necessarily make them them easy to achieve but in this case the contributions fit the bill.

Each speaker spoke excellent English (they were all Korean-based) and was well prepared. They spanned the gamut from describing a new tool to edit IndoorGML files to the requirements of Martime management services for defining the use of indoor spaces in ships carrying passengers. Between these were two mobile application projects (one for use in the Coex Center where the 82nd OGC Technical Committee meetings are being conducted) and two projects used indoor navigation with robotics. 

After each talk I thought of connections between these speakers, their projects (all but one new to me) and some of my past and current projects. I look forward to following up with each and using the workshop as a springboard to new dialog in the future.

The presentations will be available in the next few days on the IndoorGML Workshop web site so that others may also benefit while requiring less travel time and cost.

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3D Information Business Strategy

Business Models for Indoor Positioning

Given its low penetration in today's smartphone-focused world (16% of 2011 smartphone sales, down from 33% in 2010, according to IDC) and its recent difficulties, Nokia is not frequently listed as a technology leader in 2012. But it is too soon to dismiss the company entirely.

Its deal with Groupon is worthy of note as an alternative to relying on device sales as a future revenue model.  Though it's not the first company to think of advertising as a business model, and advertising is my least preferred business model, having a robust indoor and close-proximity-to-point-of-sale technology will be highly strategic and might change advertising into something less distasteful.

The "Groupon Now!" service for Nokia Lumina smartphones (currently only available in the United States) works outdoor as well as indoor. The really big potential is to use the device's precise location to target highly appropriate messages to its owner/user. When I say "highly appropriate" I mean to target a notification based on so many factors about the user's current situation, that the advertising becomes an anticipatory service.

An "anticipatory service" is basically anything that is provided to a user just prior to their needing it in daily work or personal life in a way that it provides unprecedented levels of benefit. An existing anticipatory service is a routing service on GPS devices that takes a user around a traffic jam before you arrive in the traffic itself. Another is an alert when you are approaching the expiration date of your contract with an important merchant or service provider. As simple and common place as anticipatory services may seem today, they are not (often) based on user location and they rarely alert a user at the point of sale (i.e., a location).

Nokia's CTO office had its eye on Indoor Positioning-based services many years ago. When Nokia acquired Gate5 and Navteq it significantly increased its assets in the location and positioning technology space. Here's a 2009 video of Brett Murray talking about anticipatory services driven by indoor positioning.

If there's a company that needs to adopt a new business model, it has to be Nokia. I hope that this company's indoor positioning technology portfolio will help it either directly, through relationships directly with the providers of anticipatory services, like Groupon, or indirectly by licensing its patents to others who will be leveraging indoor position as one of the key triggers for notifications.

It will just need to do it quickly in order to beat Apple and Google to the punch line.

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3D Information Augmented Reality Innovation

Playing with Urban Augmented Reality

AR and cities go well together. One of the reasons is that, by comparison with rural landscapes, the environment is quite well documented (with 3D models, photographs, maps, etc). A second reason is that some features of the environment, like the buildings, are stationary while others, like the people and cars, are moving. Another reason for these to fit naturally together is that there's a lot more information that can be associated with places and things than those of us passing through can see with our "naked" eyes. There's also a mutual desire: people –those who are moving about in urban landscapes, and those who have information about the spaces–need or want to make these connections more visible and more meaningful.

The applications for AR in cities are numerous. Sometimes the value of the AR experience is just to have fun. Let's imagine playing a game that involves the physical world and information encoded with (or developed in real time for use with) a building's surface. Mobile Projection Unit (MPU) Labs is an Australian start up doing some really interesting work that demonstrates this principle. They've taken the concept of the popular mobile game "Snake" and, by combining it with a small projector, smartphone and the real world, made something new. Here's the text from their minimalist web page:

"When ‘Snake the Planet!” is projected onto buildings, each level is generated individually and based on the selected facade. Windows, door frames, pipes and signs all become boundaries and obstacles in the game. Shapes and pixels collide with these boundaries like real objects. The multi-player mode lets players intentionally block each other’s path in order to destroy the opponent."

Besides this text, there's a quick motivational "statement" by one of the designers (this does not play in the page for me, but click on vimeo logo to open it):

 

 

And this 2 minute video clip of the experience in action:

I'd like to take this out for a test drive. Does anyone know these guys?

Categories
3D Information Augmented Reality Innovation

Improving AR Experiences with Gravity

I’m passionate about the use of AR in urban environments. However, having tested some simple applications, I have been very disappointed because the sensors on the smartphone I use (Samsung GalaxyS) and the alogrithms for feature detection we have commercially are not well suited to show me really stable or very precise augmentations over the real world.

I want to be able to point at a building and get specific information about the people or activities (e.g., businesses) within at a room-by-room/window-and-door level of precision. Instead, I’m lucky if I see small 2D labels that jiggle around in space, and don’t stay “glued” to the surface of a structure when I move around. Let’s face it, in an urban environment, humans don’t feel comfortable when the nearby buildings (or their parts) shake and float about!

Of course, this is not the only obstacle to urban AR use and I’m not the first to discover this challenge. It’s been clear to researchers for much longer. To overcome this in the past some developers used logos on buildings as markers. This certainly helped with recognizing which building I’m asking about and, based on the size of the logo, estimating my distance from it, but there’s still low precision and poor alignment with edges.

In 4Q 2011 metaio began to share what its R&D team has come up with to address this among other issues associated with blending digital information into the real world in more realistic ways. In the October 27 press release, the company described how, by combining gravity awareness with camera-based feature detection, it is able to improve the speed and performance of detecting real world objects, especially buildings.

The applications for gravity awareness go well beyond urban AR. “In addition to enabling virtual promotions for real estate services, the gravity awareness in AR can also be used to improve the user experience in rendering virtual content that behaves like real objects; for example, virtual accessories, like a pair of earrings, will move according to how the user turns his or her head.”

The concept of Gravity Alignment is very simple. It is described and illustrated in this video:

Earlier this week (on January 30, 2012), metaio released a new video about what they’ve done over the past 6 months to bring this technology closer to commercial availability. The video below and some insights about when gravity aligned AR will be available on our devices have been written up in Engadget and numerous general technology blogs in recent days.

I will head right over to the Khronos Group-sponsored AR Forum at Mobile World Congress later this month to see if ARM will be demonstrating this on stage and to learn more about the value they expect to add to make Gravity Aligned AR part of my next device.

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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.

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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.

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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?

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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.

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3D Information Business Strategy News Research & Development

London’s Imperial College

On July 27, 2011 the UK Research Council awarded a £5.9m grant to the “digital city exchange” programme of Imperial College. According to the press release, the funds are to be used to establish a new research center focusing on “smart cities” technologies.

A multidisciplinary team, involving businesses, public administrations and academia, is being put in place to use the city of London as a test bed for emerging smart cities hardware, software and processes. The article in the Financial Times very perceptively puts the focus on the following statements issued by spokesperson, David Gann, the head of the innovation and entrepreneurship group at Imperial College.

"New sensors and real-world monitoring can be combined with “cloud computing” to bring greater efficiency and new services to cities. For instance, data about peak traffic periods and local sensors could be used to avoid congestion for supermarket deliveries.

“London, with all its economic and social diversity, will be a very good place to launch some of these capabilities into new cities around the world and create new jobs and growth. The act of invention is at the point of consumption.”

Another article about the grant emphasizes, as did the press release, more of an urban planning angle.

It's very exciting to have this center establishing itself, although the size of the grant does not seem in line with the ambitions and objectives as they are described, and there should be others of its kind connecting to it as well.

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3D Information Augmented Reality Research & Development

AR for Blacksburg

The AR-4-Basel project is a pilot for what could become a widespread trend: a municipality or any size area can make data sets it owns and maintains for its citizens available to AR developers who then can prepare AR experiences for visitors and inhabitants.

Ever since starting the AR-4-Basel project in May, I have been planning how to expand and apply the lessons learned to other cities. The first to follow is definitely Barcelona, Spain. The AR-4-Barcelona project is already ramping up. Then, Berlin is my next target. I’d like to explore the possibility of getting something started in Beijing as well, if there is going to be an AR in China conference in 2012.

Another “B” city which has all the earmarks of a future haven for AR experiences is Blacksburg, Virginia!

“The 3D Blacksburg Collaborative is a consortium of multi-disciplinary researchers, experts and students from various universities and governments, who are creating a data and delivery infrastructure for an interactive virtual 3D city model.”

Which “B” city would you nominate for a future AR project?