Summer World News

(C) AWE 2013

The Augmented World Expo (AWE) has again come to an end a bit ago and now more and more videos show up. Also decided and up online now the Auggie award 2013 in different categories!! Good to take your time to browse through those entries and winners!

  • Best Augmented SDK For Developers (Winner: Vuforia by Qualcomm)
  • Best Augmented Marketing Campaign (Winner: GOLD STREETWEAR by GIOVANNI LANDI)
  • Best Augmented Solution for Enterprise (Winner: Otolift Stairlift B2B tools by TWNKLS)
  • Best Augmented World Video (Winner: Sight by Eran May-Raz & Daniel Lazo
    from Bezaleal Academy of Arts
    )
  • Best Augmented World Hardware (Winner: Sphero by ORBOTIX, INC.)
  • BEST AUGMENTED WORLD Start-up (Winner: Robert Wang – CEO, 3GEARS SYSTEMS)
  • … and probably of biggest interest from the user perspective the award for the Best Augmented World Mobile App. The Winner is “Hermaton – Enter the Grid”:

    “Hermaton is an augmented reality exploration game designed as a large scale spatial installation, which follows from our initial architectural prototype for “Grid”. […] The AR system is enlarged to occupy an entire room by covering each wall with trackable markers which can be experienced on both Android and ios devices. The prototype was developed using Vuforia Augmented Reality SDK and Unity3d.”

    More info on the developer’s/designer’s page.

    Also presented during the AWE, was the updated version of the ARmedia 3D Tracker by Inglobe Technologies.

    From the makers: AR-media™ 3D Tracker is the outcome of a research project by Inglobe Technologies. It allows to identify and track complex objects independently of their scale. This means that the very same technology scales well independently of the size and features of the object to be tracked. The tracker is also robust with respect to change of lighting conditions and allows to easily manage the contents to be associated with the real world view of the object. Limitations relate to transparent and shape changing objects.

    There are more videos on it for architecture (Building Maintenance Applications) and instructional for maintenance (Ford Ordinary Maintenance). The solution is stated to be available soon for non-programmers and as a SDK for developers.

    Friends and colleagues, who could attend AWE were impressed with the quality, but without having seen it live I’d wait for more real-life footage before judging too fast. Three things remain uncertain with the videos above:

  • a) how stable is the tracking really during operation under problematic or unknown conditions?
  • b) how long does it take to train the tracker really?
  • c) how good will it scale – also for inter-connecting different feature maps for different buildings, objects, etc.? Hopefully we get closer to a solution that really allows us to track with a single app over multiple buildings, objects, streets, etc. without losing a solid overlay.
  • Can’t wait for more!! :-)

    In other news…

  • AndroidPolice is presenting native android apps on Google Glass. This way we get a nice proof of concept on using AR games on Glass, like Google’s Ingress.
  • Augmented Lecture Helper for the university professors or shy-guys in the crowd, who’d rather twitter their professor for question instead of raising their hand…