From Stripping Firemen to Petting a T-Rex

Fellow Augmented Reality-ers,

We find ourselves in week three since the birth of this fascinating subject coverage and we can't hold our excitement any further. It is time to give you more. We invite you to kick back, grab a hot cup of your favorite beverage, put on some smooth jazz (or anything else you fancy) and just watch the string of words unfold in front of your eyes and drag you deeper into the magical world of augmented reality....

Welcome back to Augmentacious!

1. IKEA

Let's start by having a look at a company that some of you might recognize: IKEA. I would bet big bucks on the fact that at some point or another you have had the pleasure of redecorating your room/place with some of the (mostly) easy to assemble products that the swedish company has enriched our lives with. Now, IKEA has been doing their tech homework and in their 2013 catalogue you have the ability to check out furniture items in 3D using your smartphone and a free app called IKEA NOW.
But I will allow Johannes from newgadgets.de to explain this further:

2. LAYAR

Now that we are warmed up, let's briefly recall last week's feature: AURASMA. This company brought static media to life. By linking videos or other types of media to a predefined static picture, a mobile app would help to trigger the linked content when the underlying picture is captured. This week we want to bring to your attention a similar company: LAYAR.

So what is layar? "In an age where online consumption is skyrocketing, print publications must find a way to communicate with their readers in new and interactive ways. Layar merges the online and offline worlds, bringing new levels of engagement to a previously one-way conversation."

Layar focuses on mobile AR and their niche is that of advertising. The idea is to create 'buy now' links to call up a "check-out-counter" despite the initial use of hardcopy material (magazine). As they say, it is combining the two worlds. But let's see what this actually looks like:

3. RAY BAN

Over to Ray Ban. The company specializes in sunglasses and has been hugely successful doing so. In today's world of growing online purchases, companies like Ray Ban has a slight disadvantage though. People want to try the goods before buying. Especially when it comes to fashion items such as sunglasses. But thanks to AR we have now taken a big leap towards getting customers closer to the real experience of trying on glasses. Admit it, every time you see a pair of glasses (especially funny ones) you try them on....this is your chance to try as many as you want, while no one starts giving you looks after a while!

Try it....it's a lot of fun.......RAY BAN VIRTUAL MIRROR

4. PENNINGTON's

Now here is a fabulous example of enhancing a retail experience. The female clothing store Pennington (USA) used AR to layer in some stripping firemen when the female specimens were checking out their new clothes in the big mirror. While they two fine gentlemen came sliding down on poles and gently undressed, they fortunately kept their pants on.

But Pennington went one step further and made this into a total buzz. They invited some vivid bloggers to come try this (without them knowing of course). The positive feedback went viral and resulted in very effective, cheap marketing campaign for Pennington.

5. NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC

I want to finish this week's update with a video that will put a smile on your face. I don't know if I can purely blame the music for that fact, or simply the smart marketing power of National Geographic. While touring various malls in Hungary, National Geographic allowed passersby to interact with the content they might expect to find on the channel itself. We are talking Dolphins, Spacemen, Lions, Storms, Dinosaurs and many other fascinating elements you may not get a chance to get up close with (or want to) in real life. While social media integration was not at the top of the agenda, it certainly created a buzz and it most likely enlightened the day of everyone that was lucky enough to be there.

With this last example and that smile on your face I conclude this post. Over the past three weeks we have introduced you to the world of augmented reality, what it is and where we can find it in real life. Today we saw another few applications, mainly in Home Design, Advertising and Retail. 

Going forth we are continuing our quest a won't stop until we found answers to the following issues:

• The nature of the technology (Post 1-3)
• The innovative applications of augmented reality (Post 1-3)
• The benefits of augmented reality with an emphasis on the business value proposition
• The challenges and risks associated with augmented reality

Rest assured, we will keep feeding you the awesome ways that augmented reality is already shaping our lives and will exponentially continue to do so.

So make sure you have bunkered some of that favorite beverage of yours at home. You will need it.

Team Ogres.

From Fighter Cockpit to Aurasma

If you still find yourself struggling to grasp the concept of "adding an additional layer to reality," let us help you by giving a couple of practical applications of this technology - in the fighter cockpit and in a BMW. 

In short, augmented reality is used to project images onto windshields. 

As most advances in cutting-edge technology have their origin in the armaments industry, we can find a few early-stage implementations of AR in high-tech weaponry.

Let's start with helmet-mounted displays (HMD) for pilots. HMD's are a device used in combat aircraft. It appeared in the mid-1970s to help the pilot aim heat seeking missiles or make bore attacks by projecting important targeting and navigational information onto the goggles of aviator. Its effectiveness was shown after the South African Air Force's first jet fighter operations with HMD, and many nations have adopted this technology. 

One recent example is the AH-64 Apache with IHADSS (Integrated Helmet And Display Sight System)




The IHADSS is integrated with the sensors of the combat helicopter. These sensors are calibrated and aligned so that the line of sight (LOS) of the aviator is directed to the targeting points of missiles and machine guns, making it easier for the pilot to aim. In order to detect movement of the pilot's head and helmet, optical and electromagnetic tracking technologies are used.  

Now let's move on to a commercial use of this technology. In the automotive technology, Head-up display (HUD) technology is a recent trend. Recently BMW produced a car with a full color HUD, which projects relevant driving information in the drivers’ line of sight. 

Although it looks magical, it is also very simple in concept. The images are projected through a small square depression on the dashboard. 

These two are clear uses of AR in real life. Nevertheless, AR is not widely spread nor perceived as a technology anywhere close to maturity. Below is Gartner's technology hype cycle for 2012. According to Gartner (an IT research and advisory firm in the US that coined the term), "A hype cycle is a graphic representation of the maturity, adoption and social application of specific technologies.” Gartner has been using this hype cycle to explain the over-enthusiasm or 'hype' and subsequent disappointment that typically happens with the introduction of new technologies.¹⁾ 

According to the hype cycle, AR is is just barely past the ‘Peak of Inflated Expectations,' which means there is a chance that the expectations or enthusiasm for this technology is overly inflated. Gartner also estimated that it will take 2 to 5 years for the benefits of AR become widely demonstrated and accepted.

But recently we have seen a fascinating video of one product which is the first huge push to get useful AR into the hands of everyone. It is Google Glass, and it has a huge amount of hype behind it! Please take 2 minutes of your time to watch this video.

[Google glasses official promo: http://youtu.be/6BTCoT8ajbI]

We will later study and share more about this potentially revolutionary technology from Google. But we discovered there is much more than Google Glass to be excited about! Let us steal a peek even further into the future of AR.

First, beyond glasses with AR, some scientists are developing AR contact lenses! These virtual contact lenses will eventually replace glasses in the future. At the university of Washington, professor Babak Amir Parviz and his students are working on it, and it may become a reality soon enough.²⁾ 

Second, even more than virtual contact lenses, some scientists are trying to implant a transceiver into the human body which receives electric video signal from the outside and transmits signals directly to the eye tissue. This is called the Argus-II bionic eye. It's not so far fetched as you might think - the US FDA approved the world’s first bionic eye recently.

Lastly, let us tell you another interesting application of AR - Aurasma. It is a software tool that adds animated video layers onto the real view of the smartphone, as apposed to other apps that only display static images and text. You can tag any kind of real world image and link that with video. Once the smartphone identifies the tag of the real image, it automatically adds a video layer. Please take a look at Matt Mills' TED speech about this software. 

[Matt Mills at TED: http://youtu.be/frrZbq2LpwI]

Aurasma is a free app, which can be used on most iPhones and Android devices. By installing the app pointing your phone at a tangible real world object (such as a building, movie poster, or newspaper), a user is instantly presented with one or more layers of rich media content such as sound, video, or animation.3) 

Aurasma shows another possibility of practical implementation of AR - effectively delivering complex information in an easy to understand manner. HP (owner of Autonomy, which developed Aurasma) expects Aurasma will soon replace traditional paper user manuals. By just pointing your smartphone at the new device you bought from HP, you can watch animated guideline for installation and use. Aurasma also has huge implications for educational use. 

As you may have noticed, the pace of AR development is growing rapidly and the impact of this technology on human life is boggles the imagination. As a first start, we truly hope Google Glass does not fizzle out, but introduces the world the possibilities of AR. 

We hope you enjoyed our second journey into AR. See you at the next post!!!

- Team Ogres - 

[References]

1) Quoted from Wikipedia 'hype cycle'

2) Reference from web site ‘Bit Rebels’ (http://www.bitrebels.com/)

3) "Making augmented reality a reality can benefit insurers" by Barry Rabkin, OVUM (http://ovum.com/2012/03/27/making-augmented-reality-a-reality-can-benefit-insurers/)

WELCOME TO AUGMENTACIOUS

Dear beloved readers,

Imagine yourself in the middle of a strange city. Fantastic buildings, beautiful restaurants and historic monuments surround you, but everything is unfamiliar. There is so much to see and do, but right now, all you can hear is your growling stomach.

You could open your travel guide, try to locate yourself, and get outdated information about food options. Or you could use the Yelp app’s Monocle feature. You point your phone around you and miraculously, it knows exactly where you are and displays what restaurants are around, the type of food, a rating, the distance, and whether they are open for business! 

Take a look below:


Ladies and gentlemen, this is Augmented Reality (AR) - the world around us enriched through the wizardry of technology.

Let's define AR a bit more thoroughly. What specifically is AR? It is not a simple question, as AR is a very broad subject embodying hundreds of different concepts, interpretations and implementations. The common definition of AR is the embedding an additional layer of information on top of "reality" (the normal perception of a person’s surroundings) in order to provide additional value. The usual medium is an interactive device such as a smartphone, which layers the information on top of a live-view camera. The display can encompass additional facts, an alternative view which enhances specific, more important parts of the scene, or a view which can even reveal things hidden to the naked eye.

AR has a huge range of possible applications – tourism and entertainment, medicine and military to name just a few. But the most important question remains. Will this work? Will AR become a reality, in a feasible and helpful manner?  Will AR's benefits overcome the immense challenges of widespread adoption?

In blog posts to come, we will dive further into the fascinating world of AR. What are the technologies driving its growth? What has already been done, and what is coming soon (Google Glass, anyone?). Who will be using it? What is the long term potential? And what are the technological, economic, and societal hurdles AR faces? 

All of this and much more … in the upcoming posts. 
See you all again soon!