Augmented Reality in our world today..

Hello world, Thanks for joining me in our discussion about augmented reality and Gestural Interface.

Just to reiterate, we have defined Augmented Reality (AR) as a type of virtual reality that aims to duplicate the world's environment in a computer. If you’d remember we also defined Gestural Interfaces as the goal of interpreting human gestures with mathematical algorithms into a computer. In combination, these things enable humans to interface with the machines and interact naturally without any uses a remote or any kind of mechanical devices.

Today, I will be showing some examples or experiences of how Augmented Reality and Gestural Interface have been integrated into our lives; especially some applications, and also how you can create your very own augmented reality!

According to an article written by Aden Hepburn, he stated ten different augmented reality examples naming the Layar browser as the number one medium of experiencing AR in our world. This Browser enables you to select multiple layers of content to automatically find detailed content based of your location. To further understand the Layar browser, I went to the Layar website to dig further. This browser enables the enhancement of real world objects using digital information with the goal to interpret interactive and immersive features like 3D objects and animation. So if you were to be walking around and you see a poster or advertisement with AR within, you could just pop out your phone and with this browser you’d be able to see the goodies that’s behind the poster.

Another example is called Nearest Tube. This Application based in the busy streets of London helps them to navigate the confusing local underground and the various stations. Instead of trying to use maps that don’t show you your exact position or your relative closeness to your next point of transport. The Nearest Tube shows all of the 13 lines of the London Underground stations, their locations and also how many miles or Kilometers from their current point of location. If you’d like to see more or a demo, click here. Another Application like Nearest Tube is called the New York Nearest Subway. This application also displays the New York Subway lines and all of its 33 lines that run underground as well.

A good example that I found relative to business people was the AR Business Cards. These cards enable you to present yourself in a more personal way than a regular business card, which most people don’t tend to keep and even forget about them after a day or so.  To create one, with the link below, you’d have to create your presentation file, which would include all the information you’d like to get across, using a frontend tool you’d have to generate a QR-code which will basically aid in the flash application, thus helping to export the presentation as a XML file. Personally, I am interested in creating one because I believe I would be able to show my personality in a favorable way and also considering the fact that most people don’t know about or use AR business Cards, this would be a way to keep the interest of the person you handed your card. If you’d like to get one, check out the link here.

Not leaving out Gestural Interfaces, in an article called Gestural interfaces make touch screens look so ‘last year’ written by Jeff Salton, he explains that the gestural interface used in the famous movie Minority Report was based on work by MIT Media Lab’s Hiroshi Ishii. The lab has been trying to commercialize the gestural interface systems. The article explains that touch screens are using capacitive sensing, which require a finger to touch the screen, thereby sending an electrical connection between the sensors, which determines the location of the touch. On the other hand, Salton explains that Gestural interfaces have embedded optical sensors to track the movement of the fingers without having to come into contact with the display. Pretty cool huh?

Now lets get into the exciting aspect of todays topic, creating your own augmented reality.

Today, there are a lot of different ways for anyone to create an AR environment without having to worry about learning how to code.

The first one is Google Sketchup, which a free download that aids in helping you create a picture in 3D and also lets you share the model. After the model has been created you’d need an AR Media Plugin, which can be found here. Also, a webcam would be needed to show the AR over the platform of your choosing. 

Another source or medium of creating your own AR is through a company called Hoppala. For any non-technical person, this is the best option to take because their graphical web interface helps to build geo referenced content by simply clicking, there is no software installation required and no coding needed. After its created, it could be published anywhere. To find out more on this, check it out here!

In conclusion, searching for another way to make an AR, I discovered Onvert. This is a company that has managed to combine the use of QR codes and Augmented Reality helping their users to get information on a website without typing and by using Augmented Reality to allow users to interact with the worldview from their mobile devices.  Their codes are readable by any QR code application showing the compressed artwork and also displaying your Augmented Reality developments on top of your target image. Be sure to visit their website.

Thanks for visiting today, I hope I was able to quench your thirst for Augmented Reality and Gestural Interfaces... Till next time, be safe out there!

Lets go a little further...

Hello there, welcome back to another round of geek talk.

Today, I will be focusing more on the technological origins, interesting advancements of Gestural Interfaces and Augmented Reality in areas such as business, biometrics and also its’ recent advancements.

While researching on this blog, I came across an article that touched up on augmented reality, and as we had previously discussed Augmented Reality interaction techniques need to be as intuitive as possible so that the users can find it acceptable. The authors of the article; Gesture Based Direct Manipulation in Augmented Reality went into detail about augmented reality being customized to cater for different application needs. Asking around, Augmented Reality and Virtual reality tend to clash and leave people confused. Regardless of their similarities, they are actually quite different. Augmented Reality (AR) interfaces are virtual objects that are overlaid on top of a video of the real world. Whereas, virtual reality like virtual words are simulated environments that are not dependent on reality.

If you’d like to explore more check out www.mobileworldcongress.com/AR on your mobile device

Here are some cool examples of Augmented Reality.

Example One  &  Example Two

In an article by Tom Simonite titled Augmented Reality Meets Gesture Recognition, the author expressed “augmented reality and the layering involved which comprises of a computer-generated imagery on top of a view of the real world as seen through the camera of a smart phone or tablet computer”. This enables someone looking out at a city through a device can show information on the display.

The author goes a step further by talking about a new augmented reality technology, called Aurasma . Aurasma, which by definition is “a radical piece of technology that represents the future of how we use our mobile devices by bringing the physical and virtual worlds together for the first time.” This technology recognizes the user's hand gestures. This means using the application to interact with the virtual content. Aurasma is able to track and respond to gestures, which make virtual objects interactive.

Another company Blippar, is interested in merging augmented reality with m-commerce. Blippar is actually the first image-recognition phone application that helps to bring newspapers, magazines and posters to life, with exciting augmented reality experiences and instantaneous content. The company just announced the launch of a new service, called ‘Blipp to Buy’, which would allow media owners to use its image recognition platform. Their customers will be able to can use the free Blippar application to buy products in press advertisements and also print publications. The Company believes that the ‘Blipp to Buy’ will be a new way for media and even name brands to increase their revenue on the potential of mobile commerce augmented reality technology.

When it comes to mobile augmented reality platform, a company named Layar is said to be the “world’s largest with more than 10M installs, 9,000 developers and 2,500 layers”. The application is known for being able to display information overlay on top of your camera, which is done by an overlay of your route directly on top of what is coming through your Android/IOS camera. I know this can be very useful to be instead of a regular GPS will sometimes tend to lead you to a closed off construction route or even in a worse case scenario to a completely nonexistent destination. According to their website information; Layar brings impactful augmented reality experiences into people’s everyday lives. To find out more about this company, please don’t hesitate to check out their site here.

Augmented reality unknown to me as well has been in the defense industry for about 20 years. The pilots used head mounted display to provide data about the plane. The sports industries also use this technology: for American football, the first down line during the game does not exist on the grass, with the help of AR it helps to properly examine more carefully what happened or what is going to happen in other situations.

Earlier this year in Las Vegas, Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in recent light of gestural interfaces and augmented reality advancements, showcased Mercedes, which had created an interactive sculpture that features technology to create a vision for a safer driving experience. The sculpture created was called Dynamic & Intuitive Control Experience (DICE). Dice features includes; displays that can be controlled without touch and they are fed by cloud-based computing communication.

DICE

To discuss Augmented Reality in biometrics, last year in November, John Sutter wrote an article on what the researchers at the University of Washington and Finland's Aalto University have been developing. The article describes the development to be a prototype of a contact lens that would project digital images onto the retinas of whoever would be wearing it. The contacts will be able to receive data from other resources and provide real-time information. Also, on the 22^nd of February, CNN reported that Google is developing a set of glasses that will display digital information on top of the real world. The glasses will include a small screen that will sit a few inches from someone’s eye. The glasses’ camera will be able to monitor the world in real time and overlay information to the consumer about locations, buildings and the relative surroundings. If you’d like to read more on this visit the article here..

Augmented Reality has increasingly found its way to be included into our everyday lives. Its uses vary from different Business needs to Advertising needs and also everyone’s favorite; Games. 

Here I included a short preview of the  Mobile World Congres 2012 promo. Check it out!

Hope you enjoyed the today’s blog; join me next time as I go into augmented surrealistic experiences, more examples and also how you can create your very own augmented reality!

Thank You! J

Just a Brief Introduction..

So, when I think about Augmented Reality and Gestural Interfaces at first I automatically think about minority report or maybe magic but researching into it I find out that it has a completely different. Breaking the two topics down, Augmented Reality mostly known as AR is defined by webopedia computer dictionary as a type of virtual reality that aims to duplicate the world's environment in a computer. It is basically the combination of the real scene viewed by the user and a virtual scene generated by the computer that augments the scene with additional information. On the other hand in an article called Gestural Interfaces, the author Julian Dibbell expresses the topic as the goal of interpreting human gestures with mathematical algorithms into a computer. Today, with the xbox kinect out there, the Gesture recognition enables humans to interface with the machines and interact naturally without any uses a remote or any kind of mechanical devices.

Focusing and Looking at a brief history of the term augmented reality, it was coined in the early nineties by Thomas Caudell who was making one of the first attempts to apply virtual-reality technology to Boeing's manufacturing and engineering processes. Broken down, the verb augment refers to the action of adding to something in order to make it more substantial.  According to buzzword, the term is derived from the Latin augere meaning 'to increase'. Today the term is used mostly with the context of a 3G mobile and mainly as a link to a social networking. It has become crucial that televisions are connected to a social network and also car systems to have navigational abilities as well as a nice sounding entertainment environment. An important goal of this blend of technology for me is to create a system in which the user cannot tell the difference between the real world and the virtual augmentation of it.

A lot of researches have been put into augmented-reality work around the world. In February 2009, at the TED conference, Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry presented their augmented-reality system, which they developed as part of MIT Media Lab's Fluid Interfaces Group presented their project, which they called SixthSense. They explained that it relies on some basic components that are found in many augmented reality systems, which would be a camera, a small projector, a mirror and also a smartphone.

Compressed together these components are strung together which for their company would be worn around their neck. Check This Out For More Information. Pretty cool huh?

I believe its rather unfortunate that the Layar Augmented-Reality App is not quite known out there, it wasn’t until I was seated in a class teaching a week ago that I head about it. In Gadgetwise, Azadeh Ensgha published an article Another Augmented-Reality App for the iPhone about it and here she stated that layar application uses a camera feed and its GPS to conjoin data and graphics which would allow users to select a layer from whichever sites of their choice which a user could then point their phones at whichever surrounding points of interest to get more information about the area. 

News has it that Arcane Technologies, which is a Canadian company, sold augmented reality devices to the United States military. Their device would help in augmenting information around us and could also overlay blueprints from a satellite directly into the soldiers' field of vision. Unfortunately, with all its awesomeness it still has a lot of challenges to overcome. In an article Limitations and the Future of Augmented Reality issues like privacy concerns, and having too much information comes to mind. For privacy concerns, the article points out that image-recognition software and Augmented reality will soon allow people to see information about whoever they want and even strangers who can use this for malicious intents. On the case of too much information, the article makes mention of the blackberry phenomenon which took place last year. The fear is that an overreliance on augmented reality could mean that people could be missing out on what's happening right in front of them such that human interaction might be minimal or maybe needing a personal touch which of course would be unavailable in a computer program.

Regardless of all, this technology is more than cool and is on the rise, we can only wait for its perfection. Contrary to popular belief, I think that it is really going to be something that people will use every day when they step out and go about their busy day. For a more common example of this technology, in the popular movie Iron Man, I found a video on YouTube showing a snippet and I have imbedded the video right here :)

Join me next time as we explore more in depth into gestural interfaces and this new advancing technology!