Augmented Planet » futures

Augmented reality and the shopping mall of the future

lester — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:34:39 +0000

Interesting augmented reality proof of concept from Intel.

The touch sensitive screen replaces the printed store guide that shoppers use to navigate around a mall. It works by projecting an interactive display on a screen. As the screen is touch sensitive, shoppers are able to pull up information about stores along with floor plans.

Since every shopper is a different hight, it automatically detects the viewer’s height and calibrates itself accordingly.

The sound in the video is a bit crap, but the technology is an interesting glimpse on how shopping trips to the local mall will be in the not so distant future.

Intel POC

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWgleaSjOXI

Real-time tracking and Layar 4?

lester — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 09:23:17 +0000

Yesterday I went to watch Brazil play in the world cup, on the train I was listening to a couple of guys trying to explain the offside rule which was amusing to listen to.

Interestingly I came across an augmented reality demo a few weeks back that showed real-time tracking of players in a football game to show when they strayed offside. I’m not sure how much of the video below is smoke and mirrors as the dates don’t quite make sense. The video was uploaded in December but there was no camera API or OS beta back then.

Assuming it is real, the most interesting bit is that the description says ‘based on Layar technology’. Is this a first look at features in Layar 4.0?

Real-time offside concept

www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnmxT6x85p8

Exclusive report: Augmented reality and the adult entertainment industry

lester — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 14:08:29 +0000

This article has an adult theme.

For the last 15 or so years I have been at the cutting edge of technology, always two steps ahead of the curve. I remember a long time back doing an event for Microsoft and talking about Smartphones. I met one guy in the audience after over coffee who told me mobile phones will never catch on. People have house phones and there is no need to carry a phone around with you he said. If people are not home when the phone rings, the caller will call back later, there is simply no need for a mobile phone. Well we all know how that turned out. After the event I spoke with another delegate over some beers who not only embraced the whole idea of mobile devices, but he wanted to know how he could deliver a mobile porn experience.

In my years of working at the cutting edge only two things with technology can be taken for granted.

When a new video playback technology is launched, Stephen Spielberg will launch yet another digitally re-mastered special edition of the Star Wars trilogy.
Porn will be the earliest of early adopters.

Skipping forward to the present day what has surprised me more than anything has been the lack of activity around augmented reality from the adult entertainment industries. Augmented reality would appear to be the ideal next generation technology that enables users to control their own movies but there is a distinct lack of content. So to answer the question, why is the adult entertainment industry not on the augmented reality bandwagon, we decide to ask the question to Quentin at Pink Visual, one of the leading mobile erotica companies around.

Quentin, could you start with a brief introduction to your role, the company and what the company does.

Officially, my job title here is “Director of Public Relations,” but that title doesn’t go far in describing my actual role at the company. In addition to the PR work, I also handle a lot of the company’s market research, statistical analysis, risk assessment, affiliate fraud control and I assist our in-house legal department where adult-industry-specific legal issues are concerned.

As adult entertainment studios go, Pink Visual is one that was created in reverse of the usual pattern; most studios our size started off shooting content for physical media and then branched out into online distribution and other areas. We started off in the mid-90s as a strictly web-based enterprise, and expanded from that foothold into DVD, cable, satellite and other more ‘traditional’ distribution channels. More recently, we’ve established ourselves as one of the leading mobile erotica companies – possibly even the single largest mobile adult entertainment company at this point. (Reliable metrics on adult companies are virtually impossible to come by, as there are very, very few publicly traded porn companies, and therefore very little data available on our competition for us to go by.)

History has shown that the Gambling and Adult Entertainment industries are normally the first to adopt any new technology and drive it forwards. Surprisingly there are no interactive augmented reality casinos or interactive adult applications available. Why do you think that is?

The adult industry is in an interesting place right now: on the one hand, there is a desperate need for innovation, and for development of a new means of engaging the consumer beyond serving up an endless series of dirty videos; on the other hand, many companies are struggling to keep their heads above water, financially, as a variety of factors have eroded their profitability substantially over the past 3-4 years. While the industry has a history of quickly adopting new technologies and new mediums for viewing and delivering porn – and augmented reality certainly appears to have potential in that regard – I think at the moment many adult studios are looking for a quick fix to right the ship, and the idea of tackling a new technological challenge is simply too daunting for them. To the extent that adult companies appear to be drawn toward anything “new” in relevant technologies, they are drawn to mobile devices, and to a lesser extent the potential of 3D porn. There’s nothing new about 3D, of course, but it is squarely back on the radar these days (owing mostly to the commercial success of Avatar, in my opinion).

It’s also possible that adult companies have looked at the technology and just haven’t figured out an effective way to weave augmented reality into their content or marketing. We’ve struggled with that question a bit ourselves; our initial demo merely scratched the surface of what’s possible, and in the months since we developed it, the challenge has been to come up with the concept that will resonate with our customers, and add value to the viewing experience that goes deeper than novelty and gimmickry.

Talking of 3D porn, cut very quickly to an excellent comedy moment from the TV program Jonathan Creek.

3D Porn – Jonathan Creek Christmas Special

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TeOm-V6GJ7w

- continue on page 2 (see link below)

Augmented Reality Advertising – A Possible Future

lester — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 12:49:19 +0000

Last week we had a couple of students visit us to finalise their dissertation which is based around augmented reality, cheers to Bradley and Kieran for dropping by our office. One of the topics we discussed was how augmented reality will change advertising and will it change advertising for the good.

I’m not convinced that advertisers fully understand the potential yet, but nether the less there are a few good examples of augmented reality campaigns that enable a user to interact with products before they commit to buy. Everything from trying on sunglasses, clothes, watches or even seeing how furniture will fit in the home.

For a long time now we have heard about advertisers wanting to give us geo-targeted promotions, its not fantasy, there are many companies that offer Bluetooth Marketing solutions which have a proximity range of around 100m and can beam out offers to any mobile user foolish enough to leave Bluetooth enabled. You know the kind of thing where you are out shopping and your mobile receives special offers from stores as you walk past. If I’m out shopping, I could be tempted to receive targeted messages about that single specific item I am looking to buy. But if I am looking to buy a TV I don’t want my phone filled up with discount vouchers for pizzas, baby food, new suits or teeth whiting products as I make my way to the electrical store.

With augmented reality companies are looking at how they can build targeted campaigns to get the best return on their investment, and this means understanding their customer. The technology already exists where digital signage is able to recognise if the person passing is a male or female, young or old, happy or sad, and then choose what advertisement it should display. Someone who is sad could be targeted with an advertisement for a holiday in the sun, where as a young guy would see the latest pair of Adidas trainers. I have no problem with that, it’s an example of non intrusive targeted marketing. But what happens when digital signage evolves to the point where it recognises you and gives you a custom advertisement based on your buying habits, or worse yet your Google browsing history?

I have a supermarket loyalty card which we use every time we go shopping, occasionally when our discount vouchers arrive we’ll get offers for obscure products that have been recommended to us based on a single random purchase we made in the past. I think the last example was we had purchased something and shortly after discount vouchers arrived for male incontinence pads, no worries, no harm done, the vouchers go in the bin.

Let’s jump forward now to a short time in the future when digital signage has evolved to the point where it can recognise individuals and offer you targeted advertisements based on your previous buying habits. Since digital signage is not private, anyone close by will see/hear your ‘targeted message’ (as well as their own), how do you feel about being offered incontinence pads while riding the escalator on the way to work?

Even further in the future when augmented reality glasses are common place, are we looking at a world where advertisers will combine augmented reality with the real world to such an extent that just by looking at a product will kick start an advertisement?

For an example of a nightmare futuristic scenario take a look at the following video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=fSfKlCmYcLc

So far developers and advertisers have been responsible (or just slow) to exploit mobile augmented reality as a geo-targeted advertising platform and have avoided spamming the user with unnecessary advertisements by pointing out the nearest Mcdonalds, Burger King, Starbucks etc while you are looking for a train station. Let’s hope that it stays that way.

Augmented Reality – The Services Of Tomorrow

lester — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:31:41 +0000

Ah the future, every futurist’s dream, with routine predictions including robots doing our house work or even taking over all our jobs and working on our behalf. I’m not really sure why I would want a robot to do my job for me, what the hell would I do? How would I earn money? Can you imagine a scenario where your robot has gambled away a month’s salary leaving you no money for food?

Personally I’m conservative when making predictions about the future, it’s easy to get carried away and over estimate the changes, particularly with augmented reality and the impact it will have on our lives.

Right now the only prediction I can make with any degree of accuracy is the wife is going to be getting a pretty crappy Easter egg. Having left the egg shopping to the last minute again, I know when I get down the supermarket today or tomorrow the best eggs will all be gone leaving me with slim pickings. I’m also pretty sure that augmented reality glasses are some years off, I expect someone will have a go at mass marketing them in the next 5 years but I think it will be at least 15 years before they are anything like useful.

I define useful as interacting with our surroundings and giving us real contextual information not just giving us a compass telling us which way is north or showing us our latest emails

While the video below is not aimed at augmented reality glasses but holographic augmented reality, a technology that would be practically impossible to provide in the video context, it is an excellent concept video nether-the-less of what kind of services that augmented reality glasses may give us access to.

Games:
Being a fan of air-hockey, I have to say that the demo in the video looks pretty compelling. Presumably you could play multi player with either a computer control character or someone in another country.

AR Air Hockey

Navigation:
I like the personal navigation icons that each user has guiding them in the right direction. As some one who gets lost even with an iPhone and Google maps, this technology can’t come soon enough.

Never get lost again with AR navigation

Email:
Ok I’m not really sold on this part, having a giant keyboard projected on to the ground, nah not for me.

Not sure thats a great place to stop and do email but...

Watch the full video

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJyIuEnEecA

How far away do you think this technology is, and what type of applications would you like to see?

The scary world of augmented reality gaming

lester — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:57:05 +0000

Today’s augmented reality games are a fun affair, shoot a few aliens, blow up a few planes, or relax and put out a few fires all from the comfort of your own home. The only danger you face is banging your knee on a table as you turn around. But as technology gets more sophisticated and graphics get better, what are the implications of augmented reality games, will the technology make them to hot to handle?

Is the the future of gaming?

When I brought an xBox some years back and played Grand Theft Auto III for the first time, I thought that some people would have problems separating real life from the game, or at least use it as an excuse in their defence come their day in court. Sure enough a few people went out on violence sprees and did exactly that and as a result the use of violence in video games came under the spotlight.

I love computer games as much as the next man but it’s going to be a scary world when computer games have photorealistic graphics and are blended with augmented reality. Take a look at the following video:

The future of AR gaming?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJItdmumxYY

While it looks cool, (tell me you are not dreaming of AR Quake right now?) what are the implications for games here? On one hand you can’t halt the progress of video gaming because the graphics and therefore the violence gets too real, on the other hand will augmented reality gaming lead to an increase in violence because some people are unable to separate the two?

The Case Against Augmented Reality

lester — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 13:22:34 +0000

Gianmarco at the University of Computer Science in Bologna (Italy) asked an interesting question a few days ago on the cons of augmented reality. When talking about AR we are always looking on the positive side so in response to Gianmarco’s question I was thinking about the negatives.

Privacy: We discussed before about user being able to geotag your content without you having control. For example your mother comes over to your house and tweets about your priceless collection of Ming dynasty vases. Your home location is geotagged and out there for all to see along with details of your most valued possession. An enterprising thief using the latest version of BurglAR would be able to see high value items worth stealing in the local area. While geotagging is a concern it’s not really a problem caused by augmented reality, your mother may choose to upload a geotagged picture of your Ming vases to Facebook or Flickr so the same data would be available in Google maps.

Location: There are numerous applications to share you location data, Google Latitude, Ping, Hayway to name just a few. Location data is not live, an application has to request your location or you have to update it periodically so people are unable to see your movements in real time. Can anything negative come from people knowing your presence? Possibly a thief could see when you are out and come can take your Ming collection but again it’s not augmented reality making it possible.

3rd Party Data: Layar are doing really well in getting developers to build 3rd party layers so I took a look through the list of the 300 or so to see if there is anything there that could be construed as potentially evil. If we are playing the role of criminal mastermind then we’d be disappointed to learn that Layar isn’t going to help us with our quest for world domination. There are interesting layers that will tell me what products have been sold in an area so I could have my band of henchmen patrolling the streets trying to track down high value items that have just been sold. But I’m sure the data is not live and any would be master criminal would do better sitting outside a local electronics’s store and following someone home.

Users: Users are at risk from augmented reality but mostly though stupidity rather than the technology. For example, driving while messing around with the phone or falling down a manhole because they are not looking where they are going, but the same goes for twittering while driving or walking.

Hollywood: There is a very real risk of crappy AR themed movies. Remember Lawnmower man for virtual reality?

It’s difficult to see any negative in the current implementation of mobile augmented reality as it’s really about taking data from other sources and presenting them in a new view. The data is freely available from other sources and just presented differently.

Is there no potential for evil with augmented reality?

Face recognition: When augmented reality technology becomes powerful enough and we can recognise individuals just by point a phone at them (or through AR glasses) then I think we’ll see some negative. Lets imaging someone builds an application that scans the police crime database. You might happen to share similar features as a known criminal and find yourself banned from stores, worse you could falsely be recognised as a sex offender and have your life ruined.

Advertising: Love it or hate it it’s everywhere. Location aware advertising has been in the works for a while with the promise/threat of offers being sent directly to our mobile devices as we are walking down the highstreet. Depending on your point of view, intrusive advertising could be a negative feature.

Porn: Considering the porn industry is usually the first to adopt new technology it has been remarkably slow to exploit virtual reality or augmented reality. Negative? definitely if you’re the wrong end of the business and being exploited.

I failed to find any immediate negative issues, so let me ask you. If you were planning on becoming a master criminal hell bent on either taking over the world or planning the crime of the century, how would augmented reality help you achieve your goal?

Augmented Reality And The Future Of Sport

lester — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 14:56:43 +0000

Some several months back I blogged about an augmented reality solution called Seer that was implemented at Wimbledon. The solution was ingenious, use your Android device to find out how long the bathroom or food lines are as well as get relevant information on the games in play. Scores, statistics that type of thing all from the comfort of your seat. Not only do you know what is happening with the game but you now the perfect time to go to the bathroom and grab a hotdog on the way back.

EYEPLY are a start-up company that are looking at changing the way we view sports by combining a similar augmented reality solution for all sporting events.

EYEPLY - The future of sport

Golf is an obvious candidate that would benefit from such a solution. If you are sitting at the 7th green is hard to know what is happening at other locations on the course, with an EYEPLY augmented reality solution you would be able to point your device in the general direction of the hole you are interested in and get up to date scores and player information on the game taking place. In the video below EYEPLY talk about solutions for baseball games, when a player steps up to the plate you are able to click on him and get his relevant stats. If you are fanatical about a sport you want to know everything about a player.

When I saw the Seer video I thought it would be fantastic if the technology could be applied to a football match. Being able to click on a player, get his stats, how far he as run, how many passes he has completed etc all live during a game would be pretty amazing. Especially when you haven’t seen that player before. I have a friend who occasionally works for various TV stations on football events overlaying the graphics that show scores and other game stats. A lot of information is tracked in real-time by various companies and is available at the touch of a button. The data is there, the question is how do you make that information available and useful to be consumed by the public.

Could this be the future of sports?

Static games like golf or tennis are somewhat easy to manage as the players exact location is not that important, but in an augmented reality world with fast paced games like football the problem is how do you track 22 players around a pitch in real-time and determine who is who? If you want to combine a Sims style icon over every player on the field then you need some pretty good tracking. Interestingly the EYEPLY guys say they are working with a company who have the tracking technology to do this so perhaps at next years world cup we’ll see some really cool augmented reality solutions.

EYEPLY Video

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtOCePI7w8c

2010 Augmented Reality Predictions

lester — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 14:54:10 +0000

For the 100th blog post I was hoping it would be a chance to reflect on 6 months of blogging on augmented reality. Rouli over at ARTimes has been running a series recently on predictions in the augmented reality industry for 2010 and was kind enough to ask me my thoughts. Since my predictions were published yesterday it seems like a good time talk about them in detail.

3D browsers will be a fad (Junaio/Layar 3D)
Before I made this prediction Junaio hadn’t announced they were launching an open API and there was no real info on Layar 3D. To some extent I still agree with my prediction. Junaio is engaging and the guys at Metaio are constantly adding new models to keep users coming back for more, but there will come a point where it’s no longer interesting adding 3D images to your pictures and won’t matter what new models are added. Layar 3D while new will have similar problem, adding 3D content to the real world is fun and interesting for a while but after you worked your way through the various models you’ll begin to look deeper.

My point with 3D browsers being a fad is these products will need to grow into something more than they are today. Offering developers an API to build content is definitely a step in the right direction as developers will dream up scenarios that you’d never have imagined. One of the 3D layers that I think is quietly pushing the envelope with what Layar 3D can do is the Beatles layer. Rather than just being a POI resource with 3D content the Beatles layer allows you to interact with the Beatles by taking you on a virtual Beatles tour of London and giving your photo opportunities. It’s much more compelling than just point the camera for location aware data.

The key here will be what developers are able to do with the API and what they build.

Augmented GPS will arrive (eg TomTom’s with cameras)
Mobilizy the guys behind Wikitude showed a preview of their augmented reality Wikitude Drive product earlier in the year. Rather than a 3D map you see the real world with onscreen with visual indications. Augmented reality is crying out for innovation like this and I can’t believe that device manufactures like TomTom or Garmin are not climbing over each other to be the first to market with a device. My prediction is sometime next year we’ll see a dedicated device that has a camera and an augmented reality view.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReH9dmqfOqA

By the end of the year I think we’ll see some early form of face recognition on the iPhone/Android. It wont be perfect but it will arrive.
I don’t think that December next year we’ll have mobile applications that will be able to spot you in a crowd but I do think that we’ll start to see some early applications that use some form of crude recognition. It will probably be server based solution where you’ll need to take a picture and it is uploaded to a server for processing but I’m sure it will come.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tb0pMeg1UN0

I see either Layar buying Wikitude or Wikitude buying Layar
One of the predictions I saw from Rouli was a suggestion that Microsoft would purchase either Layar or Wikitude. Having spent 10 years at MS this doesn’t sound like a typical Microsoft buy. From speaking to a few ex-colleagues they are looking at augmented reality (Microsoft Tag for example) but also building their own browser application which I would imagine will be linked to Bing.

My comment about a Layar/Wikitude merge was purely speculative but having seen Google’s announcement about Goggles I do wonder if the market is big enough for 3 main browsers to continue to exist. In early 2009 just before either Layar or Wikitude were announced I went to see a VC in London to try and get some cash to build an augmented reality browser. Needless to say I wasn’t successful but afterwards myself and few friends decided that we would fund the project ourselves. Once Wikitude and Layar were released we realised that there was no way we were going to be able to compete with their resources. Gamaray was another browser project that decided that competing would be futile and closed shop to focus on something else. Personally I would not have wanted to have woken up to the news that Google with their R&D budget to rival a small country had released a beta augmented reality browser, not only that but a beta that appears to do so much. Google compete for fun, there are not many companies that pull off the feat of becoming a serious player in the mobile space almost overnight, If Google decide they want to own the augmented reality browser space how do you compete with that?

Layar is a bit like Skype, they have a great product but are not getting any decent content created with their API.
Layar have done a remarkable job of getting 3rd parties to build layers. My day job for the last 10 years has being working with companies in a similar position to Layar who have an open API and want to reach out to developers to build applications and content for the platform. At Skype I ran the project to release the extras manager and worked with various 3rd party developers to build content. The Skype API was fairly simple (I have no idea what it is like now), you could control the audio stream or chat messages, the problem is it takes a while before people start to push the boundaries. Initially at Skype we were knee deep in call recorder applications, applications that didn’t probe too much at what was possible or attempt to do something different. It took a lot of effort but working with the developer community we eventually started to get video applications, fax applications, translators, even lie detector applications that analysed voice stress during calls. Layar while they have lots of layers available are very much in this early Skype world where nothing is pushing the boundaries of what is possible and they need layers that do more than show you the nearest whatever, I want to do more than just have a list of POIs, I want to be able to interact.

Despite what Layar say, I don’t see them releasing a Symbian version of their app. Too much effort for no reward (no distribution channel)
I was surprised when Wikitude arrived on Symbian and re-evaluate what I said about Layar not being released. However I don’t see Symbian being a big focus for either companies with iPhone and Android continuing to get a lions share of the development. The main problem is distributing the application on Symbian, if I search the Ovi store for ‘augmented reality’ I only find Nokia Point & Find (Wikitude is in there under maps), it’s the same when I search other stores like Handmark, or Handango. I couldn’t even find ARound from Sequence Point Software which is part of the Symbian Foundation launch of the Horizons publishing project that promised to list your application in all the application stores. The problem is very much application visibility with consumers, my brother-in-law has been a Nokia user for as long as I can remember and has never once installed an application for his Nokia device. Since he brought an iPhone he spends £20 a week on downloads. I have stopped telling him that his latest application was available on Symbian for years as it not worth it anymore. While Wikitude I’m sure will get downloads the audience is going to be users who go looking for it rather than those who come across it and decide to install.

Symbian is without doubt the most advanced mobile platform, it’s a dream for developers giving you complete control over the camera and allowing developers to build augmented reality marker based applications, but where are they? I can only name a handful of applications. In contrast iPhone developers are screaming for the same level of camera access Symbian provides and you can bet as soon as Apple open up the API we’ll have applications available in a week.

I think consumers will get tried of the current ‘throw data in the camera view and call it augmented reality’ applications we have today. We’ll continue to to see hype and everyone who owns POIs will continue to produce so called AR apps but I think we are reaching the top of the curve and consumers will want more. Once Apple open up the api marker based games will be the next wonder
When I started Augmented Planet there was about 3 augmented reality application in the appstore, this morning there are 161, by the New Year I’m sure we will have busted the 200 mark. The problem is how useful are the applications, when I mentioned earlier about going to see a VC to invest in a browser idea the problem I had was trying to convince him that holding up a phones camera to see what is around you is what people want. His argument was he would never hold up his camera to see a restaurant review and didn’t see the value. At the time I thought he was wrong but by chance a little while later I found myself lost in London and looking for the tube station, no problem I thought I’ll use an augmented reality tube locater. It actually didn’t help me at all, holding up my camera to navigate was not useful, there are too many stations in central London all grouped together and the developer really hadn’t given a lot of thought to design, I found using the traditional map view worked out to be far easier.

I am still pretty passionate about augmented reality, anyone (including my bank manager) who happens to ask ends up getting 30 minutes of impromptu demos, but I am looking forward to when we move away from the POI finder applications. At the moment the industry is still very much in the ‘we need an augmented reality feature in our application regardless of whether its actually useful’ stage, or ‘lets cash in on the augmented reality craze and release an application’ (I have to admin that I fall into this bracket). Having worked in the mobile industry for so long I still do the odd bit of consulting helping developers bring a product to market, there are so many developers out there with POIs who see augmented reality as a way to a quick buck, sooner rather than later consumers will become bored of the latest Burger King finder and look for real content.

Cheers to Rouli for running the predictions which can be found on artimes.rouli.net . They are well worth taking a look and commenting on whether you agree or not.

Google Goggles What This Means For Augmented Reality

lester — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 14:59:41 +0000

Now the dust and the wow factor has settle from the Google Goggles announcement a few days back I thought it would be interesting to take a more in-depth look at what this means to the augmented reality industry.

Multi Search Topics

There are demos a plenty of taking photos of book covers to retrieve reviews and online prices. If you are new to augmented reality then it’s actually not that new. SnapTell have both an iPhone and Android application that provides this functionality. Just take a picture of the cover of a DVD, CD, Book, or Video Game and the software uploads the image to the SnapTell server and runs image recognition to compare the picture against likely matches. Once a match is found you get the usual mix of online reviews and cheaper prices.

Recognising a barcode image I would assume is a lot less complex than recognising a book cover since there are less colours and shapes to contend with. Barcode shopping is another feature of Google Goggles and again there are various products available that provide the same functionality, ShopSavvy on the Android or RedLaser on the iPhone are just a few examples. I use RedLaser from time to time to see just how obscure the product range is. GoCat Tuna and Herring cat crunchies is the most obscure product I have managed to have recognised so far. To compete with Goggle’s logo recognition there’s GetFugu for the Android, iPhone and the Blackberry so again nothing new there. Goggles will search on wine bottle logos which as far I as know is unique as I don’t know any other application that does that today, but I’m sure it’s only a small leap from recognising a book cover to recognising a wine label.

You might think that I’m having a dig at Google but far from it, just becuase they are not first does not make the application any less cool. There are some really fantastic features in Google Goggles that make me drool. I’m no art buff but Goggles will enable me to become an art critic and give me relevant information about major pieces of art, all I need to do is sneak a crafty picture when the security guard isn’t looking and Goggles will tell me the name of the picture and the artist. Fantastic if you are walking around a museum but again it’s probably not a huge step in recognising the Mona Lisa or a paperback copy of C++ for dummies, ultimately it’s a blob of shapes and colours that are compared. Nether the less it is a fantastic use of image recognition.

My personal favourite and the piece de resistance of Google Goggles is a feature that must have the CEOs of the various augmented reality browser companies laying awake at night as Google are about to change the way location aware augmented reality browsers work.

The way augmented reality browsers work today is they use LBS to figure out your current location and the compass to see which way you are facing. With that information they can determine what points of interest you might be facing. Most of the time it works pretty well but I’m sure you know that GPS is not accurate, sometimes my tests have been accurate to 30 meters and sometimes it strays to up to a mile. If you are facing a landmark the visual indicator provided by the augmented reality browser may or may not be shown near by the object you are looking to locate. The second problem is there could be a building between you and the point of interest; the application has no way of actually knowing what is in front of you and what you are really looking at.

Google Goggles however uses image recognition on the landmark. If you are standing at Big Ben in London it sends a copy of the image to the database, performs an image match and then tells you precisely what you are looking at, not what might be around you and in that general direction. The accuracy is so good you can sit at home in California and look at your holiday snaps of Big Ben and it will still recognise the landmark. Fantastic when you get back from a trip and wonder just what all those photo’s are actually of.

Google’s strength is obviously search and the vast array of seemingly endless images that have that their disposal. Properly indexed there would seem to be no limit to what can recognise, particularly if they open up the API for developers to produce our own plug-ins. What breed of cat is that? Cat recognition plug-in tells me is a British Short hair and it’s favourite food is fish. That’s a nice car what is it? Car recognition plug-in tells me it’s an Aston Martin DB7, insurance group is a 31 and it has a top speed of 186mph, but I can’t afford it because my bank plug-in is warning me based on my current salary I would have to save for 30 years.

You can’t help think that terminator vision has just got a step closer. Some six or seven months ago we got our first augmented reality browser, now at the end of the year it seems like we are about to take a huge step forward in augmented reality with Google’s arrival. It will be interesting to see how the current crop of augmented reality browser providers respond to the Google play and what is up their sleeve for the future..

The video walk-through below well worth a look at some of the features of Google Goggles.

Excellent overview of Google Goggles.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA7wwKIC24s

Augmented Reality Brings Lego To Life

lester — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 11:10:42 +0000

Mataio are always up to interesting things in the augmented reality world and their latest demo is no exception. Lego has always pretty popular with children but if Mataio have their way, in the future children won’t have to imaging playing with their creation, they will be able to interact with them via augmented reality.

In their latest demo video, Mataio cleverly track the lego bricks as the boundary to the dragon/knight fight and bring the scenario to life through augmented reality glasses.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0PC-glqLp0

No doubt this solution was built with Mataio’s SDK, so if you are looking for augmented reality tools take a look here.

While this is only a demo and not an augmented reality software solution shipping today, Lego are setting the trend with bringing the bricks to life. DisneyTown Orlando installed a camera where children can hold up the Lego box and see the toy they can build. Very useful in helping them persuade parents to part with their money.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UxWkZtUKaI

I’m going to sound like my grandad but kids today don’t know they are born. I had to wait until I was about 14 before I finally got hold of a computer, even then it was a ZX81, with 1k of ram and a black and white display. I feel old knowing Lego has more processing power than the PCs I grew up with.

Augmented Reality Vision

lester — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:03:41 +0000

Floating around on Twitter all day has been the news article on augmented contacted lenses.

Imagine getting a terminator eye view of the world around you. Well the future is a lot closer than you think, not close enough that you’ll be nipping down to SpecSavers anytime soon but:

We’ve also shown that these microcomponents can be integrated through a self-assembly process onto other unconventional substrates, such as thin, flexible transparent plastics or glass. We’ve fabricated prototype lenses with an LED, a small radio chip, and an antenna, and we’ve transmitted energy to the lens wirelessly, lighting the LED. To demonstrate that the lenses can be safe, we encapsulated them in a biocompatible polymer and successfully tested them in trials with live rabbits.

Not only do rabbits get lots of sex but they also get to try out the latest gadgets.

You can read the full article here.