Category: Augmented Reality

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

Categories
Augmented Reality Social and Societal

AR-4-Teens

Changing human behavior is difficult. Go ahead, try it! Exercise more! Eat tomatoes for breakfast!

Changing behavior with new technology is right up there amongst the world's greatest challenges, after world hunger and a few other issues. In my post on AR-4-Kids, I concluded that if children were introduced to AR during infancy, adopting it would never be in question. Certainly using it in daily life would seem natural. Do companies providing AR today really need to wait for the crop of children born in 2010 or later (introduced to tablets with Ernie and Bert speaking to one another) to play with these technologies and keep them as part of their behaviors? 

Suppose you learned as an infant to adopt new technology? "Millennials" are among those who, from their earliest memories have mobile, Internet-connected technology in their hands and pockets and, in some cases, intuitively figure out the role it plays in their lives. 

Results of a study covered in several mobile marketing portals (but is surprisingly difficult to find on the Ypulse site), are not encouraging. The high school and college-age participants of Ypulse's survey are “baffled” by augmented reality technology, particularly when it's infused in mobile apps on leading smartphones. Neither of the news bulletins I've read about this study (here and here) describe the Ypulse methodology or sample size. However, below are the findings at a glance from the Mobile Marketing Watch portal:

  • Only 11% of high schoolers and collegians have ever used an augmented reality app.
  • retailers like Macy’s and brands like Starbucks have come out with mobile AR apps. They’re fun and clever, but as with QR codes, Millennials don’t always get the point.

Among students who have used AR apps:

  • 34% think they’re easy and useful;
  • 26% think they’re easy but not useful;
  • 18% think they’re useful but not easy; and
  • 9% think AR apps are neither useful nor easy to use.

We have a long way to go before the technology put in the hands of consumers, even the magnificent millennials today, meets true needs, adds value and gives satisfaction. Heck, we're not even near a passing grade! 

Those who design and produce AR experiences must reduce their current reliance on advertising agencies and gimmicks. Or at least they must reduce emphasis on "wow" factor that clearly has no purpose (except to engage the potential customer with a brand or logo).

Utility, especially utility in the here and now, is more important than anything else to change behavior and increase the adoption of AR. 

How useful is your AR experience?

Categories
Augmented Reality Social and Societal

Pop-Up Poetry

I occasionally read using the Amazon Kindle application installed on my laptop, but eBook reading doesn't appeal to me. I prefer physical books. That's why this new publication written by Amaranth Borsuk and programmed by Brad Bouse, Between Page and Screen, caught my eye. It's a physical book that can only be read using a webcam connected to the web. You point the book's page at the webcam to read the letters and watch the animations.

This work consists of letters exchanged between two lovers, "P" and "S." Some have called it poetry. Without a literary reviewer's mind or having read it myself, I can't say if it is truly a work of poetry but it is exciting to see how technology, paper and art continue to mingle in new ways.

I'm not thinking this is a practical or particularly enjoyable experience, in part because I don't care for the big marker approach to AR, but this is a natural progression following upon other "magic book" projects.

One of the most well-known is Camille Sherrer's magic book project Le Monde des Montagnes (2008) which uses Natural Feature Recognition (no markers) to detect the page you have shown to the camera and then superimposes animations on the live video of the page (the augmentation is only on the screen).

 

 

 

Imagine what this could be like if it were a graphic novel, like some other projects. I'm thinking here of Jack, the Time Traveller, a project developed by Julian Looser, Adrian Clark, Shunsuke Fukuden, and Katy Bang (while they were working at the HIT Lab NZ) for the Australian Centre for the Moving Image exhibition Screen Worlds. The book tells the story of Jack's journey through the history of cinema and his quest to find an interesting and well-paid job.

There are other ways to play at the intersection of print books and video. In one example of about the same time period as Jack, The Time Traveller (early 2011), Davy and Kristin McGuire created a 3D effect and digitally inserted characters into the story using video recorded with a Canon 5D Mark II projected onto paper.

"It tells the story of a mysterious princess who lures a boy into her magical world to warm her heart of ice. It is made from sheets of paper and light, designed to give a live audience an intimate and immersive experience of film, theatre, dance, mime and animation."

One of the many differences between these three important Magic Book projects and the first work I referred to above is that Between Page and Screen is available for USD 24.95 from Siglio Press.

Categories
Augmented Reality Social and Societal

AR-4-Kids

I've focused my attention on what adults can do with the real world when data is associated with people, places and objects in particular settings. When developing AR-4-Cities (with the AR-4-Basel project) and AR-4-Venues (with the AR @ Mobile World Congress 2012 project) the scenarios always involve an adult roughly the age of my daughters (21, 24 and 26).

Side note: These people are among the very oldest digital natives. In early 1987 the eldest "painted" pictures (in black and white) with a mouse on a Fat Mac. A few years later, the middle daughter's first machine, a Macintosh II, was connected to a 2400 baud modem but I'm really not sure she ever used it because there wasn't any content on the Web and it was horribly difficult to get connected. By that time I had graduated to the 9600 baud modem to connect to AppleLink and download e-mail. 

Okay, back to the future. Within months of the beginning of the mobile AR craze CNET senior writer, Daniel Terdiman, revealed the future of toys. With the exception of one trip to a Toys-R-Us to purchase an iTag AR-enabled Avatar Action Figures set, in February 2010 (and this was for an adult friend who could not obtain the Mattel merchandise in Switzerland), I have neglected the youth segment.

What an oversight! How many children have smartphones or tablets? The most accurate answer is more today than last year and fewer today than next year.

Plenty of people within the AR community recognized this trend early and have been working on it. Put-a-Spell, the first game Ogmento (an AR game publisher started by Ori Inbar) demonstrated about two years ago, featured a panda bear teaching children how to read with tiles (photo below).

And the category is expanding. The results of the survey of AR toys Christy Matte published on Techlicious today reveals the 2012 "crop" of AR for kids. I've never been to Techlicious before this article caught my eye. The topic is a good fit. Although I detest their slogan "We make Technology Simple," the site appears to be a technology portal for (young) women, probably the age of my daughters only not digital natives, where they can read reviews and make purchases. Recent blogs and feature stores are about Internet safety and the best tablets for children's books.

I don't know when I'll have an opportunity to use the new AR-enhanced toys, if ever, but it's clear that children who play with these in 2012 will find AR in other aspects of their lives perfectly normal. And, in 5 years time, the users of these products will marvel if they arrive in a new place and discover that there are no local points of interest available. It will be like a Christmas tree without gifts under it or going into the Sahara dessert without water.

Categories
Augmented Reality Events

Augmented Olympics

The London 2012 Olympic Games are fast approaching. I'm eager to see the extent to which Augmented Reality could be applied to this global celebration of human athleticism. I'm keeping a list of all the campaigns and applications being developed for this special event. Today the first instance was entered in my list. If you want access to this list, send me a message.

BP America recently launched as a component of its Team US support, a campaign using AR to raise public awareness of the US Olympic team.  They've worked with rising stars in archery, cycling, gymnastics, track & field and swimming, as well as some athletes with handcaps shown in the graphic below, to develop content (video clips and photographs). In addition to populating their web site, they had the help of New York City-based Augme to package the content into AR experiences triggered by using trading cards.

 

The system seems a bit of a stretch. There are a lot steps for users, even if they are sports fans.

Imagine this:

  1.  BP America will need to spend a few (certainly 5 figures) dollars and weeks letting people know that there are trading cards in upcoming issues of Bloomberg BusinessWeek magazine.
  2. Then, after buying the BusinessWeek and finding a card, the user will need to follow instructions leading them to a web page where they can launch the image recognition. A press release says that the app is also available for mobile (I was unable to find it, but let's assume for the moment that it's available on iTunes)
  3. Finally, if they are able to get the software to work, the Internet connection is high speed and their computer is sufficiently powerful, they will need to have a web cam. All included in a smartphone, of course.
  4. Those with all the components will then raise the trading card in front of the webcam or smartphone.

I'm not a BusinessWeek subscriber and will probably not find these cards, but I'd really like to know how the use of AR in this scenario is going to bring more value to sports fans than watching the videos and looking at photos already on BP America's web site.

I'll contact the people at Augme who designed the campaign and ask if I can see the statistics on this experiment in a few months time.

Categories
Augmented Reality Innovation True Stories

Augmented Vision 1

Yesterday I wrote a few thoughts and plans I have about Augmented Humans. In what seems like more than sheer coincidence, I immediately began to see connections to this theme. Today, by following a series of links that seemed to have nothing to do with the topic ("is this how it's supposed to work?" I asked myself), I stumbled upon this early October 2011 piece on Tanagram's blog about Rob Spence.

According to the post, Rob is working is now a consultant for Eidos Montreal. As part of his consulting gig, he shot and produced this video.

The 12-minute piece compares what today's Augmented Humans experience and have with the future vision presented in the recently released Deus Ex – Human Revolution.

Note that Tanagram’s Firefighter Augmented Reality Mask is featured in this video.

Categories
Augmented Reality Events Internet of Things Research & Development

Augmented Humans

Augmented humans are at the epicenter of a scenario for the future that Ray Kurzweil has been popularizing for over 20 years. To recap the central thesis of his life's work, including the book The Singularity is Near published in 2005, Kurzweil promotes the notion that technological singularity is the inevitable result of our research on genetics, nanotechnology and robotics (including artificial intelligence). Whether one believes the trends to which he points will go as far as Kurzweil predicts (in which some of those born human and who live among us today will live far longer than any earlier specimens of our race and will, at the same time, benefit or suffer from "superintelligence") or not, research is continuing unabated in these domains.

Some findings of basic and applied research in areas at the core of the Singularity will be reported by those who will present papers during the third annual Augmented Human conference. This conference whose proceedings will later be published by the ACM focuses on augmenting human capabilities through technology for increased well-being and enjoyable human experience. The program committee solicited contributions on the following topics (this list pasted directly from the conference call for papers, which closed earlier this week):

  • Augmented and Mixed Reality
  • Internet of Things
  • Augmented Sport
  • Sensors and Hardware
  • Wearable Computing
  • Augmented Health
  • Augmented Well-being
  • Smart artifacts & Smart Textiles
  • Augmented Tourism and Games
  • Ubiquitous Computing
  • Bionics and Biomechanics
  • Training/Rehabilitation Technology
  • Exoskeletons
  • Brain Computer Interface
  • Augmented Context-Awareness
  • Augmented Fashion
  • Augmented Art
  • Safety, Ethics and Legal Aspects
  • Security and Privacy

I'd like to hear what these folks are doing. However, I'd also (maybe even more) like meet and get acquainted with flesh and blood Augmented Humans. One whom I met a few years ago at a conference is Rob Spence. Rob is a documentary filmmaker who lost an eye and decided, with the help of Steve Mann, one of the original first-person webcamera video streamers, to have a wireless video camera fitted into his prosthetic eye. Rob kept a blog about the experience for several years but moved it three years ago this month to another host and seems to have been closed. Here's a 2010 interview with Rob published on the Singularity University's blog. According to Rob Spence's web site, visited today when researching this post, he's working on a documentary for the Canadian Film Board. So, at least for now, his story is private.

I'm currently reading Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, a work of fiction by Haruki Murakami. The central character (unknowingly) has his brain rewired as part of an experiment and it (his brain) is programmed for him to live the rest of his life "reading" dreams from the skulls of unicorns. It's a gracefully written story. Although stories of people whose bodies and minds have been altered to become "augmented humans" make for excellent works of fiction, of a blog, and probably a documentary, I suspect that the paths humans pursue towards this goal are filled with failed attempts. Interesting to note the last two bullets on the list of topics covered at the AHC. There's confirmation of my concern.

At Laval Virtual, the largest industry event dedicated exclusively to Virtual Reality, Masahiko Inami, a professor in the School of Media Design at the Keio University (KMD), Japan, is giving a talk entitled "Initial Step Towards Augmented Human". Here's the session description:

What are the challenges in creating interfaces that allow a user to intuitively express his/her intentions? Today's HCI systems are limited, and exploit only visual and auditory sensations. However, in daily life, we exploit a variety of input and output modalities, and modalities that involve contact with our bodies can dramatically affect our ability to experience and express ourselves in physical and virtual worlds. Using modern biological understanding of sensation, emerging electronic devices, and agile computational methods, we now have an opportunity to design a new generation of 'intimate interaction' technologies.

This talk will present several approaches that use multi/cross modal interfaces for enhancing human I/O. They include Optical Camouflage, Stop-Motion Goggle, Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation and Chewing Jockey.

Although probably less shocking and hair-raising than the talks at the third AHC, this session should also be very thought-provoking and practical for those working in the field of Virtual Reality. I'll try to make it to both of these events to get fully informed about all aspects of Augmented Humans.

Categories
Augmented Reality Business Strategy

Frog Design’s Top Tech Trends in 2012

Frog Design's post on top technology trends for 2012 is highly insightful. First, the graphic. It's Alice who just can't resist a peak into the future!

Then the list of trends begins with the trend on which I spent considerable time with in 2011 and see expanding in 2012: using mobile AR and similar interfaces to engage with the data available (published by) Smart Cities.

Although many others saw its potential a decade ago, and numerous cities have been working on it since this decade began, there's still a lot of research to do before a basic formula emerges, a set of best practices or guidelines shakes out. Here's how Frog Design's Chief Creative Office describes the modern city:

"The modern city is becoming a pointer system, the new URL, for tomorrow’s hybrid digital–physical environment. Today's Facebook will be complemented by tomorrow's Placebook. Explosive innovation and adoption of computing, mobile devices, and rich sources of data are changing the cities in which we live, work, and play. It's about us, and how computing in the context of our cities is changing how we live. A digital landscape overlays our physical world and is expanding to offer ever-richer experiences that complement, and in emerging cases, replace the physical experience. In the meta–cities of the future, computing isn't just with us; it surrounds us, and it uses the context of our environment to empower us in more natural, yet powerful ways."

This description assumes, thought isn't explicit about having a sensor-rich environment (aka Internet of Things). Isn't the "digital landscape overlaying our physical world and expanding to offer ever-richer experiences" a beautiful image?

Many of the other 14 trends are also well synchronized with the topics of this blog.
I hope you will find this presentation as valuable as I have. I recommend that you view in full screen mode.

Tech Trends 2012  

 

Categories
Augmented Reality Events Standards

AR Standards Community

When we place a phone call, we don't insert a pre-fix for Blackberry phone, a different prefix for calling someone who uses an iPhone and another for Android users. A call request is placed and connected, regardless of the device and software used by the receiver's handset.  When people publish content for the Web (aka "to be viewed using a browser"), they don't need to use a special platform for Internet Explorer, a special content management system or format for Opera Software users, another for Firefox users, and another for those who prefer to use Safari. And, as a result of substantial effort on the part of the mobile ecosystem, the users of mobile Web browsers can also view the same content as on a stationary device, adapted for the constraints of the mobile platform.

With open standards, content publishers can reach the largest potential audiences and end users can choose from a wealth of content sources.

Augmented Reality content and experiences should be available to anyone using a device meeting minimum specifications. If we do not have standards for AR, all that can and could be added to reality will remain stuck in proprietary technology silos.

In the ideal world, where open standards triumph over closed systems, the content a publisher releases for use in an AR-enabled scenario will not need to be prepared differently for different viewing applications (software clients running on a hardware platform).

The community working towards open and interoperable AR will be meeting March 19-20 in Austin, Texas to continue the coordination activities it performs on behalf of all content publishers, AR experience developers and end users.

If you can come, and even if you are unable to meet in person with the leaders of this community, you can influence the discussion by submitting a position paper according to our guidelines.
 

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
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
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?