Tag: AR-4-Basel

Categories
Augmented Reality Events Research & Development Social and Societal

Algorithmic City and Pattern Language

The Mobile City Web portal and the blog of Martijn de Waal are inspirational to me. He introduces many concepts that, although they do not use precisely the same words/vocabulary, they mirror what I've been thinking and seeing. One of the posts on The Mobile City from March 2011 is a review by guest contributor Michiel de Lange of a compendium of articles about technology in cities edited by Alessandro Aurigi and Fiorella De Cindio.

The Augmented Urban Spaces (2008) would be the basis for a great conference on "smarter cities" and Internet of Things.

Another post that I found stiulting is Martijn's report of the Cognitive Cities Salon he attended in Amsterdam, Martijn highlighted a talk given by Edwin Gardner entitled "The Algorithmic City" which I am sorry to have missed and, unfortunately, I have not found the slides on-line (yet). From what Martijn writes, the subject of Algorithmic Cities is currently theoretical but one can imagine a day when it will become common place.

The Algorithmic City is the result of urban planners using algorithms as part of their process(es). Quoting from the Mobile City blog post published on July 3 2011:

"So far algorhithms have shown up in ‘parametric design’ where all kinds of parameters can be tweeked that the computer will then turn into a design for a building or even a complete city. Gardner is not so much interested in this approach. The problem is that there is no relation between the paramaters, the shapes generated and the society that is going to make use of these shapes. Social or economic data are hardly used as parameters and the result is ‘a fetishism of easthetics’, at best beautiful to look at, but completely meaningless.

Instead, Gardner takes inspiration from Christophers Alexander‘s book A Pattern Lanugage."

I'm not sure if there is a connection between the theoretical work of Gardner and a video of the next version of a software solution provided by Procedural (a startup based in Zurich purchased by ESRI on July 11, 2011), called CityEngine but somehow the two come together in my mind. Using CityEngine, design algorithms are manipulated using the simplest of gestures, such as dragging. It's not a software platform I'm likely to have need for in the near future, but I hope that urban planners will soon have opportunities to experiment with it, to explore the Algorithmic City concept, and that I will witness the results. Maybe someone will build an AR experience to "see" the Algorithmic City using smartphones.

Categories
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?

Categories
Innovation Research & Development

3D City Models and AR

Google StreetView was certainly a trail-blazing concept and it has entered the mainstream. But it was not the first service and Google isn’t the first company that had the concept to collect data about the physical world by driving a specially equipped vehicle (with one or more cameras, high performance GPS and other sensors) through space. Decades earlier, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory worked on this concept in order to permit the vehicles landing on the moon (or other spatial bodies) to record their immediate environment. Earthmine is a pioneer not only in the capture of the real world (using designs developed by the JPL) but also to explore business models based on this data sets. What do these have in common? They proved that the ambitious goal of digitally “capturing” the real world in a form that supports navigation through the data afterwards, was possible.

As the technologies developed in these projects have evolved and become more powerful–in every dimension–and competitors have emerged based on other maturing technologies, systems are detecting the physical world at higher and higher resolutions, and the data gathered produce increasingly more accurate models at lower costs.

Instead of “manually” building up a 3D model from a 2D map and/or analog data, urban environments are being scanned, measured and modeled at an amazing speed, and at lower cost than ever before. Fascinating, but to what end?

In the AR-4-Basel project, we seek to make available to AR developers accurate 3D models in order for the digital representation of the real world to serve as the basis for higher performance AR experiences. The concept is that if a developer were able to use the model when designing experiences, or the placement of content, they would have a virtual reality in which to experiment. Then, when in the real world the user’s device with a camera would automatically extract features, such as edges of buildings, roofs, and other stationary attributes of the world, and match those with the features “seen” earlier in the digital model. The digital data would be aligned more accurately and the process of augmenting the world with the desired content would be faster.

In order to determine if this is more than just a concept, I need to find and receive the assistance of 3D city model experts. Here are a few of the sites to which I’ve been in search of such knowledge:

This process is proving to be time consuming but it might yield some results before another solution to improve AR experience quality emerges!

Categories
Internet of Things Policy, Legal, Regulatory Social and Societal

Smart Cities and Big Citizens

The AR-4-Basel project is a framework by which public data about a city, the city of Basel more specifically, can be put in the hands of Augmented Reality developers using a variety of tools and platforms and to encourage the development community to be creative. Many scenarios for AR in urban environments are for consumers. The end goal being that if we knew more about our immediate environments, we might make different decisions.

The departments of the city of Basel with whom I'm in communications are primarily thinking of the Internet of Things, and AR in particular, as a professional tool, enabling people to do their job more efficiently when in the field, perhaps to save on resources/reduce waste (increase efficiency) and to make better decisions which might impact their lives or those of others.

So, in the context of this project, I'm spending a lot of time speaking with experts and reading the opinions of those much more informed in these matters of "smart cities" than I. Martijn de Waal is one of those that has invested highly of himself in this topic and clearly "gets it."

One of the posts that I found particularly enlightening is a "dialog" of sorts between Ed Borden of Pachube and Adam Greenfield of Urbanscale. Rather than read my paraphrasing, please read it.

At this point, the jury is out on if these are really different positions and if different, which of these positions best characterizes the situation. It is early enough that cities (BigGov) and their managers (politicians) could "wake up" and take a more active role in their own technology use. But not all citizens want or should be participating in the decisions that require having all (and some of it sensitive) data. And, it is definitely true that citizens can and should be involved in some of these services which primarily benefit them.

I look forward to seeing this dialog continue and to learning more from the experts in this field. Maybe as a small citizen of a small urban area in a small country, I will be able to make a difference in how others live.