Augmented Reality & The Web: Present and Future Scenarios
Augmented Reality (AR) is when virtual graphics and/or data are overlaid onto real world objects. Many of you have seen this portrayed in movies such as Minority Report and The Matrix. It still seems a bit far fetched in 2009, yet there are apps that are beginning to make it a reality. One is Wikitude, an Android mobile app that mixes location imagery with information from Wikipedia. We first noticed it back in May 2008, when it was announced as one of the winners of the Android Developer Challenge.
Wikitude is described on its website as "a mobile travel guide for the Android platform based on location-based Wikipedia and Qype content." Essentially it allows users to overlay information from Wikipedia onto a photo of a certain location, via Mobile Google Maps. It currently supports 350,000 locations by GPS or by address. Wikitude was launched at the same time as the G1 phone in October 2008 and is currently available in the Android Market. Here's a video of how it works:
(via Latitude's FriendFeed page)
Wikitude represents perhaps the first stage of what is possible with AR. Microsoft recently released a video that shows other future scenarios for AR:
(via Literanista)
Microsoft's Surface app, released in May 2007, is a pointer to this future.
There are many potential scenarios for AR. A popular one is doing your grocery shopping and checking information on your mobile phone (or AR glasses!) about price, specials, reviews, comparisons with competing products, etc. With the rise of RFID chips and technology such as that being developed by Microsoft, this type of scenario isn't too far away.
Another interesting consideration is that social software will have a big role to play in future AR apps. For example when walking down the street, you could use your mobile phone to point to a restaurant, and overlaid on a photo of the restaurant would be customer reviews, recommendations, and other relevant user generated data. (inspiration from Rafael Torres)
Let us know other apps that are doing interesting things with AR technology mixed with the Internet. And of course we'd love to hear about your favorite future AR scenarios!
For more on this topic, read Alex Iskold's post from July 1007 Digital Life vs Life Digital: Our Inevitable Digital Future and Marshall Kirkpatrick's from March 2008 User Interfaces Rapidly Adjusting to Information Overload.
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Now this is something I can see catching on in a big way. Best of all, it requires new hardware! That's always a plus for the tech world. There will definitely be a generation gap for adoption. The millennials who already swim in a sea of digital input will be able to adapt fastest. They have brains formed by multi-tasking, so they will be able to accept multiple layers of visual input. My bet is that we invent a new term for this. Augmented Reality is too academic and psychedelic. Multi-channelling sounds much better.
From a pop culture perspective, it is another win for MTV. The jump-cut music videos of the 80's lead to a new way of watching TV, with only seconds between channel switches. The Real World premiered in '92, and lead to the reality shows that now dominate pop culture. This technology was clearly presaged by Popup Videos, which was introduced in '96. So watch MTV to predict the next wave of technology. That isn't far fetched, since it is always younger people who bring tech into pop culture.
This is a great example of the value uses that are coming with Augmented Reality.
According to Gartner's Hype Cycle, Augmented Reality is still in the Technology Trigger phase:
http://www.slideshare.net/rmlins/hype-cycle-for-social-software
For now, AR is still largely in the wow-factor stage with some incredibly entertaining examples coming out of some digital agencies to enhance brand experiences (just search YouTube for Augmented Reality). I expect a rapid yet subtle transition for cool to useful.
Back on the mostly-cool side Xbox 360 is rumored to be trying to 1up Nintendo with the motion sensing camera through its acquisition of 3DV Systems:
http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/news_index.php?story=23604
AR has been around for quite some time and there's lots more going on so if you're not yet familiar w/ this you will likely enjoy thinking about all of the potential applications.
This is gonna happen in 100 years, not now. it's cool, anyway.
There are already a lot of companies experiment with real world usage of AR codes. A lot of marketing companies have experimented with it and Topps Baseball Cards already have out a working version of a AR Card game.
For you Bill Gibson fans out there, one of the characters in his novel "Spook Country" is an augmented reality artist, creating holographic re-enactments of infamous crimes that visitors to those crime scenes can view with the proper hardware. It's just a sidelight of the novel, but it's a fascinating concept... just like an educated person sees more because he/she brings a deeper context to viewing, so too does an augmented viewer.
And while it's not as sexy, the combination of handheld device and GPS allows the real-time delivery of geographically relevant information ... a form of low-tech augmented reality that has great value.
Hmmm... this building is interesting. I wonder how old it is, who built it, anything unusual about it?
I also really love this AR fishbowl: http://14four.tumblr.com/post/103466357/augmented-reality-fishbowl
These futuristic visions are certainly nice to see, but I had an interesting lecture on ubiquitous computing, and one point was that user acceptance lags behind the technological possibilities by more than a generation. Sad but true!
AR already being used in movie campaigns, too.
This one's pretty user-integrated...for Jemaine Clement's (Flight of the Conchords) upcoming movie, GENTLEMEN BRONCOS:
http://ronaldchevalier.com/mindportal/
It's pretty cool!
I believe that, as tracking technologies improve, augmented reality will be useful. It's unfortunate that everybody thinks that augmented reality requires the tracking of ugly, black and white, square markers.
Augmented reality is the ability to combine the real and virtual worlds. I'm currently working on "markerless" augmented-reality, where no marker is needed to know the position of a person or an object. You can see an example at http://www.vimeo.com/3623041
My goal is to have interaction like it is shown on the HP Hands commercials: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BraU_cpfBeI
You forgot to mention the "Sixth Sense" device that was demoed at TED recently that uses AR as well. For those of you who don't know what I am talking about here is the link http://blog.ted.com/2009/03/sixth_sense_demo.php
Its not happen now.
Gadgud.com
For those of you wanting to build your own AR scenes, you can try this free AR authoring tool:
http://www.hitlabnz.org/wiki/BuildAR
All you need is a PC with a web camera.
Thanks
Cool. AR is tha thing.
What do you think about the Augmented Reality Hype Cycle? It places the marker technology in perspective.
http://www.sprxmobile.com/the-augmented-reality-hype-cycle/
This is the best use of augmented reality I've seen - test driving the new BMW Z4, from the comfort of your computer.
It's brilliant!
http://bmw.co.uk/bmwuk/augmented_reality/homepage/?bmwID=1156___bs-WjQ=@bb-RTg5X1JP@sit-bmwuk
The tech is basically in place. The software is being fine-tuned. The first generation hardware is available. It's simply a question of the correct app that will run on any platfrom.
100 years? Pff.
Id say more like 5-10.
Everything is already in place, just a mater of tech getting smaller and cheaper. (which is what tech always does)
We also need protocalls and software browsers for this Augmented Reality Network (Arn?) to really take off.
Cant have to download special software for each view of the world, it needs to be more in terms of layers.
These futuristic visions are certainly nice to see, but I had an interesting lecture on ubiquitous computing, and one point was that user acceptance lags behind the technological possibilities by more than a generation. Sad but true!What do you think about the Augmented Reality Hype Cycle? It places the marker technology in perspective.:http://www.game4power.com .
I like the idea of layers, if they bring it all together on one platform it could really have a huge impact.
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