AR.m-ato.me » videos

Magic Projection 1.0

Aya — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 21:40:43 +0000

It’s been a while since we’ve seen some AR magic or ARt, hasn’t it? Here’s some projection work by “virtual magician” Marco Tempest in Tokyo. It’s really refreshing to see some augmented reality that retracts back into the magic (magic as mystery, not performance entertainment, though it is coincidentally so) of technology.

Technical details available via Create Digital Motion.

Bending space and time, one mall parking lot at a time

Aya — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 19:51:23 +0000

First thing I pulled from my fishing nets this morning was a nice matome/roundup of computer vision demos on Youtube which included a demo for “BriefCam”. The narration was a bit painful to go through, but the demo itself was impressive. BriefCam indexes, summarizes, and compresses events in video logs from surveillance cameras in a way I can’t quite explain ((maybe that’s why the narration was in staccato)), and most certainly sparked my imagination in terms of the future of computer vision capabilities in augmented reality environments — particularly the possibilities of compressing perception of time.

Did You Miss It? vFrame concept video, virtual pit and another AR lecture

Aya — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 23:33:19 +0000

This week’s DYMI videos are totally unrelated to eachother again, but are worth watching.

A virtual pit by Georgia Tech’s Augmented Environments Lab

“This video shows an augmented reality application we have developed to use as an experimental testbed for evaluating what components of an AR experience contribute to a user feeling “present” or immersed. In this experiment the participants are presented with a virtual hole that drops three stories and are asked to perform tasks around this “pit.” Their heart rate, galvanic skin response, and skin temperature are measured while the participant is shown different versions of the pit. The goal is to develop quantitative and qualitative methods for measuring how immersed a user is in an AR experience and to develop guidelines for people building AR applications.”

This is really cool. I’m always interested to see experiments related to the psychological effect of AR and mixed reality in general. Their website contains a little library of publications related to their research in AR as well.

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vFrame, a stop-motion concept video for outdoor AR social gaming.

vFrame is ‘yet another’ concept video for an AR social gaming platform, but their decision to use stop motion for their concept video made it unique enough to set it apart from the rest.

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“Augmented Reality as a Tool for Improving the Utility of Information” by Prof. Bruce Thomas (University of South Australia)

A reasonable introduction and ‘matome’ of augmented reality technology.

Did You Miss It? AR Distortions, OpenChan, PozAR and Volume Slicing Display

Aya — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:46:50 +0000

While AR has really taken off in the news and media over the past year, there are hundreds of examples that have been missed, looked over, or forgotten either in the rush of the recent AR ‘browser wars’ and novelty ads … or simply were released before augmented reality caught everyone’s attention. Every week I’ll attempt to post a few videos and links to examples of augmented reality, demos, and toolkits to fill the gaps for those newly interested in augmented reality technology or with less time to peruse the internet for AR goodies.

PozARToolkit and rtPozAR source and documentation available at http://foilskin.seesaa.net/ [JP]

Documentation at: http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/perception/VolumeSlicingDisplay/index-e.html

“Let’s Squish Our Fruits Together” Part 1

Aya — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:10:50 +0000

For any of you confused about the title of today’s entry and its (loose) relevance to augmented reality, keep on reading — it’s a line from Improv Everywhere’s Grocery Store Musical. Over the past two years we’ve seen a lot of amazing functional and eyecandy examples of augmented reality all over YouTube and the “blogosphere”, showcasing augmented reality technologies such as Layar and SekaiCamera (to name a couple mobile examples) and ad or promotion based AR novelties from companies like BMW and General Electric. So, back to the title… while each of these AR examples are pretty cool on their own, from time to time, I wish we could squish all these fruits together. Yes, there are events like ISMAR which bring together augmented reality enthusiasts, entrepreneurs, researchers and scientists… but there a few examples of AR that I’d like, perhaps naively, to get mashed up into a single ‘platform’.

I’m going to be honest here and openly admit that my ideal mash-up is sort of aiming for a Dennou Coil-esque augmented reality platform, and why not? Dennou Coil‘s augmented reality world was such a delightfully playful yet fairly fleshed out vision of AR, and has been a source of inspiration and excitement for augmented enthusiasts everywhere.

Let’s jump right into the list…

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Computer Vision: Georg Klein’s PTAM (Parallel Tracking and and Mapping)

“PTAM (Parallel Tracking and Mapping) is a camera tracking system for augmented reality. It requires no markers, pre-made maps, known templates, or inertial sensors.”

PTAM is a very nice markerless tracking method. While I can easily imagine QR and other 2d barcode systems remaining active in an AR world, most of the augmented media should be markerless, using a combination of PTAM and GPS/compass data.

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Menus and object creation: wah_wah_hawah’s ARDeskTop (ARToolKit)

In this augmented reality world, we need menus and interfaces to customize, build, and interact with the media around us. ARDeskTop, built with ARToolKit, is one example of a feasible model of menus and interaction. This demo is stellar, but the markers and cellphone are pretty clunky for mainstream use, and I can’t imagine anyone wanting to wear a tracking marker taped to their finger all the time. This is where the next example fits in…

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Input devices: Taehee Lee and Tobias Höllerer’s HandyAR

I know, the pun just kills me. So now that we’ve set up a few technologies for computer-vision, and laying down the ‘virtual space’ into which we can add AR objects, we need a few modes of interaction. Using computer-vision, HandyAR looks for hands in the live video image, and allows a user to utilize said hands as a mode of input or interaction in an augmented reality environment through gesture and position.

This is one possibility for the future of interface for the next augmented reality world. Caveats: closed fists, unintentional gestures, etc.

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So, can anyone arrange a little lunch party for Klein, WahWahHawah, Lee and Hollerer? … Pretty please?

Stay tuned, coming soon: Let’s Squish Our Fruits Together Part 2 – Devices, frameworks, community.