Thinks

A stream of links and notes and pictures and articles on new technology, augmented reality, new media, cross-media, TV, mobile, Internet, artificial life, digital entertainment, social networking, inspiring art. That sort of cool stuff.

2ne1.com

Archive

Mar
29th

Mon

Could Unity deliver decent AR? Looking at the forums a number of different approaches are being tried: FLAR (running in parallel) (thread) for marker tracking and for face tracking OpenCV (thread) (seen above) and FaceAPI (thread).

One problem is that apparently you cannot access the camera when in plug-in mode due to browser security; although I’m sure the Unity guys will be able to sort it out as some point seeing as Flash manages this.

Android AR V2.0 from HITLabNZ

“Marker-based tracking to be added soon.” Most probably the Android port of the AR Toolkit, of which there appearS to be at least two flavours: AndAR and NyARToolKit for Android

Mar
26th

Fri

Mobile projection AR. Quite an early example of augmenting the real world with projection from Johannes Schoning. Still waiting for mobile phones with a built-in projector parallel with the camera, a bit like Nikon’s COOLPIX S1000 PJ (see the ‘AR’ example).

(via ColdSip.com)

Mar
22nd

Mon

Mobile Augmented Reality Revenue Streams

The report distinguishes four kinds of users, namely the Corporations, Small Businesses, Public Services and the End Users. For all the four users there are revenue streams that can be tapped into when the applications are developed.

It’s more of a overview paper of the current state of AR revenue steams, leaving many questions remaining to be answered.

There’s an emphasis on mobile AR as the location-based content and service channel (Layar/Wititude, etc.) rather than true image-based (AR 2.0) technologies.

Download the paper directly here.

Bringing sketches to life using AR, the “In-Place Sketching for Content Authoring in Augmented Reality Games” study for VR 2010 by HIT Lab NZ demonstrated here in two examples: AR Gardener and Sketch-Chaser. Both seemingly based on a vocabulary of symbols that you draw, the images are recognised and realised as AR objects.

It’s similar to the way you can draw objects for your pet in Sony’s EyePet - fast-forward to 26 seconds into the video to see it.

The EyePet seems to use a more functional vocabulary (whatever shape you draw gets realised; if it has wheels then you can drive it) rather than the literal symbols (one symbol is a building, another is a tree) demonstrated here.

Adobe’s performance interface, whist not AR, is worth noting here as it takes hand-drawn sketches and live user interaction to create virtual content and so is very relevant in this space.

More at comment on Games Alfresco

Mar
19th

Fri

Solar-powered LED-embedded contact lenses could provide in-eye AR, being developed at University of Washington. A lot more to be developed, like how to focus and keep the lens stable. More info in the IEEE Spectrum original article. (via Inhabitat)

Reminds me the 25 micrometres thick 1-cm-square solar-powered spacecraft-on-a-chip prototypes in their final stages of development at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Get more information sprite spacecraft.

Augmented Citizen - an interesting set of slides from Dan Romescu and Willi Schroll at the recent Mobile Augmented Reality Summit @ MWC2010

Q: Isn‘t AR just a new mode how to display information?

A: Yes, but this in fact means to change the
mode of interaction with the world,
your physical and social reality.

(more at future facts blog)

High-tech AR uses UV LASERs to excite (normally transparent) red and green phosphorous embedded in car windscreen. Multiple sensors and cameras track the environment and the driver’s gaze (not sure if it tracks eye gaze).

The technology by GM, Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Southern California won’t be available before 2018. (via Technology Review)

Mar
17th

Wed

Hypermusic: Ascension is an opera set in 5 dimensional space by physicist Lisa Randall, composer Hector Parra and artist Matthew Ritchie.

“In his painting, Picasso imagined what a three-dimensional object would look like when viewed from a higher dimension. Here, Parra was imagining what a voice in five dimensions would sound like in four.”

Sounds interesting.

Full article at CultureLab: Sounds from another dimension.

Quantum computing plants

If photosynthesis is really performing quantum processing at room temperatures the implications could be enormous. Coupled with recent work on stealing electrons from photosynthesis, we could be at the beginning of developing the components for a completely edible quantum computer. Suitable for vegetarians. More information on the Scholes Group site and free access to an earlier paper. (via New Scientist)