Intelligent computing meets augmented reality: Brutus guides you through the Ohio State’s Campus

As promised last week on our junaio Blog, we decided to provide you with more information on the incredible application ‘Find Brutus’ created by Bradley A. Henry, Software Developer/Engineer at Ohio State University. The app helps students to explore the Ohio State Campus through their mobile Android devices. Named after the school’s mascot, Brutus Buckeye, the augmented reality application cleverly uses voice recognition, geolocation, artificial intelligence as well as intelligent tutoring systems to provide the service to the campus community.

In an interview given exclusively for metaio, Bradley A. Henry is speaking about the idea behind, the technical facts and the ongoing working processes.

What actually is ‘Find Brutus’?

In technical terms: Find Brutus is an Intelligent Mixed Reality (IMR) application using a Virtual Tour Agent (VTA – patent pending) framework. An Intelligent Mixed Reality (IMR) application is the inclusion of Augmented Reality (AR), voice-recognition (VR), geolocation, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and intelligent tutoring systems (ITS) into a mobile accessible user experience.

In broader terms: Find Brutus is a Mobile Virtual Tour Guide designed for incoming students and visitors to the Ohio State University designed specifically as a graduate research project. A user will explore campus through pre-defined target locations on campus. As the user approaches the location 3D Brutus will appear in mobile view as the indicator that they are approaching the first target. When the user identifies the location, as seen through their mobile device, the user will prompted with a few questions, including hints, about the target to answer. As the user answers each question they will then move to the next target. Version 2 is where VTA gets really exciting, see below.

Is it already a working application and in which context did you create it?

Yes, the beta version is complete. We used the free version of the Metaio SDK for Android. We are going to begin working on the iOS application over the summer as well as for Google Glass. Because the most exciting news is that this project is also part of the Google Glass Explorer pilot. We will be using Google Glass with the application to study student interactions and cognitive processing. The design of this version is study the affect of an incoming student to the university. The goal is to increase the students knowledge of the university campus and resources while acclimating them to their surroundings. If successful this should increase the students experience their first year attending The Ohio State University.

How many people were involved in the development on the application?

‘Find Brutus’ is the framework for my PhD thesis. But nevertheless a lot of players are involved: It is truly a community of engineers working on this application. I have counted over 80 people that have touched this project to some degree, currently over 8 of the Colleges and 6 departments at the university. To me this is what it looks like when organizations and people work together.

Included was also the College of Engineering Capstone project, which just won the CETI best in class project. This was a pretty extraordinary surprise, considering the level of competition. I have been blessed to work with some of the most amazing individuals. I was overwhelmed that the project was selected.

Virtual Tour Guiding has been a dream of metaio for a long time now and we are sure to bring the concept of the ‘Augmented City’ into real life. In which fields do you feel a real value for VTG?

Long-term objectives for it is to use the framework as a mechanism for navigation of locations, and buildings and as an educational device that will include simulations that work within real-world environments. Example, educate professionals or students, such as nurses or doctors in their work environment. How this would work, using an emergency room, fully equipped, a learner would wearing a pair of Google Glasses and would be required to resolve simulated problem-based scenarios that interact with the environment. A doctor would interact with a virtual nurse using to perform surgical procedures.

Could you think about other examples of using AR and Virtual-Tour-Guiding in educational environment?

Another example could be the Thompson Library Foundation Stones Tour (Submitted idea in the OSU AR Hackathon): A student would view the foundation stones through their mobile device. The stones would provide information, such as origin, ethnicity, world regions, and text and voice translation capability. The student could tour the stones, seek information on specific origins, request information such as publications, videos, research that is available through the OSU library or tour the library. An additional concept idea submitted by the University Archives includes a historical view of the campus through time. Using AR a user can explore the campus in any given decade using Glass. Example, you can be on the oval wearing Glass and prompt the VTA to view the campus in 1850. As your line of site moves images, and information, of the campus in 1850 would appear in the glasses.

What future projects are already in the line?

We are also putting on a one day display at the Columbus Museum of Art, fellow students, the Ohio Film Commission and Columbus Fashion Week will are also participating. We are currently discussing a fall project. In addition, we are also discussing a live DJ event with augmented reality later in the year. I work with a very creative group of people.

Thank you Bradley for the interview!

Website of EduTechnological

Version 1 capabilities:
• Mobile accessible
• Augmented reality
• Geo-location notifications
• Includes the first approved 3D Brutus Buckeye through OSU licensing.
Version 2
• Voice activation (Siri type functions)
• AI/Intelligent computer interactions (Collaboration with the University of Memphis FedEx Institute of Technology)
• Geo-location direction service (ask for specific outdoor directions from your current location)
• First scanned 3D Human Agent
• Web Accessible Agents (Collaboration with the University of Memphis FedEx Institute of Technology)

Internship at metaio offices in Munich: Sebastian tells about one of his best weeks in his life

My name is Sebastian and I did a one-week internship in the Munich offices of Metaio. Since I have been interested in Augmented Reality (AR) for a long time, I discovered metaio because I already enjoyed their app, Junaio. My main advisor and “personal coach“ was Matthias Greiner, who was extremely hospitable, showing me the company and explaining everything that they do at Metaio. From the first day, I had my own computer and workplace where I could explore different Junaio channels. Especially in the beginning, I was very happy that Matthias spoke German with me, but with most of the international staff I had to speak in English, which was a good chance for me to practice my language skills.

After these “first contacts” with Metaio and Augmented Reality I got my first tasks and was really part of the team. I was allowed to use, for the whole week, the very powerful software Metaio Creator and learned more and more about this program and its potentials. As time flew by, I learned a lot about tracking and finally I was allowed to create my own channel. Eventually, on Friday my channel had been published in the Junaio AR browser.

The picture shows Sebastians trackables of his business cards

Too bad that this was also my last day! I hated to go, but – if I get the chance and Metaio agrees to give a “bothersome” scholar trainee a second chance – I really want to come back for another internship in this great company.

This, unfortunately only for one week, internship was one of the best weeks in my life and that is not a lie!

Sebastian

Dear Sebastian,

We really enjoyed your company and were definitely amazed at how fast you grasped the Metaio idea! It was great to see how quickly you managed to work with the Metaio Creator and understood what is important to know. We hope you are proud about your own junaio channel and will surprise your classmates and teachers with it!

As soon as you are free to join the Metaio team we would be happy to welcome you again!

 The Metaio team 

Metaio upgrades augmented reality Creator tool for Design, Publishing Industries

The best interactive augmented reality CMS gets brand new user interface and experience for print media

MUNICH & SAN FRANCISCO, 31 OCTOBER 2012: Metaio, the world leader in augmented reality (AR) software and solutions today released the latest version of its Metaio Creator, the only commercially available desktop drag-and-drop content authoring software optimized for all print media.
“Publishers and design professionals aren’t necessarily experts in Augmented Reality yet,” said Peter Meier, Metaio CTO. “The Creator makes it easy for them to not only launch an experience but also to scale their content – massively.”

Download the Full Press Release

Introducing the new Metaio Creator

Create Augmented Reality experiences in minutes

The newest version of the Metaio Creator is the most powerful Augmented Reality content production system available. It’s the ideal tool for publishers and designers who want to bridge the digital and real worlds to add content to their print media- magazines, t-shirts, posters, logos, business cards, catalogs- nearly any image or object is just clicks away from being augmented. Publishers, Designers, Brands and Agencies don’t always have access to Augmented Reality developers. This tool allows them to easily integrate and manage augmented reality content in their mobile ecosystems. Over 300 million magazines and catalogs have already been delivered in 2012 powered by Metaio Augmented Reality technology. The Metaio Creator will enable a content explosion for augmented reality, the likes of which have not seen since the beginning days of the internet. Learn more and download the free version athttp://metaio.com/products/creator

Step-by-step walkthrough for this amazing new tool

The Metaio Creator deploys to the Cloud and major mobile platforms like Android and iOS. Publish to the Junaio Augmented Reality Browser or a native app using the powerful Metaio SDK. Powered by the Augmented Reality Experience Language (AREL), the Metaio Creator lets nearly anyone produce mobile AR interactions without any coding necessary. Watch the video to get started, or visit dev.metaio.com/creator/tutorials/the-basics/

 

South by Southwest 2013 – Vote for Augmented Reality!

Way more important than real voting. 

 

It’s that time of year again when voting begins for all of the panels everyone has submitted to South by Southwest Interactive. Even if you’re not planning on attending South by Southwest Interactive, you can still support metaio by making your voice heard in the community voting!

Take a quick minute to create a PanelPicker account (if you don’t have one) and then link straight to these two great panels that feature metaio projects and use-cases:

 

 

How A Virtual Pop-Star Sold Her First Car featuring Lisa Murphy of metaio! 

In order to engage with a younger, tech-savvier audience, Toyota launched an integrated marketing campaign for the 2012 Toyota Corolla that featured emerging technology like 2-D print activation and vision-based mobile augmented reality to leverage its existing yet scarcely-downloaded mobile app, the Toyota Shopping Tool. It also features an entirely digital open-source anime pop-star sensation named Hatsune Miku.

Toyota saw huge successes as a result: Corolla leads jumped 30% the week of the lauch; Toyota Shopping Tool mobile app downloads increased 600%; website traffice for the first week increased 167% and continued at an all time high for the next seven weeks.

In this proposal, learn how the interactive director of a multicultural agency and the project lead for an augmented reality company worked together to make this campaign a huge success for Toyota, culminating in a Multicultural Excellence Award.

 

 

Hot Housewives Getting Augmented At Home featuring a project developed with the metaio Mobile SDK! 

The lady of the house is often the one picking the décor and design at home. If she can see a ductless system in her house virtually, thanks to augmented reality, sales rise — and have they ever. Using custom mobile apps integrated with emerging technology, such as augmented reality and a custom app store, Mitsubishi Electric Cooling & Heating is revolutionizing the way its sales channel members do business. Tools in hand, Mitsubishi Electric is projecting an increase of $30 million in revenue next year, while simultaneously decreasing future costs for printing and distributing product catalogs by millions of dollars.

Mitsubishi Electric’s products can save homeowners 30-percent on their energy bill, but most just want to know, “What is it going to look like in my house?” Augmented reality is Mitsubishi Electric’s most visual tool in its custom app store that will deploy 11 new enterprise apps for a variety of specific needs in its sales channel.

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Voting starts today and continues to the end of the month, so tell your friends!

Share on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Reddit, Digg, Myspace, Friendster, IRC….basically whatever you want.

While you’re at it, vote for anything else you think is cool!

Outside voting counts for 30% of the selection process, so help us get to SXSW so we can bring these great panels to life!

Innovative Product Catalog Has Augmented Reality

And then some.

Image courtesy of Creativity Online, http://creativity-online.com/news/mccannerickson-gives-new-ikea-catalog-a-vitamin-pill/236165

Everyone’s talking about the new 2013 IKEA Catalog featuring image recognition and Augmented Reality for the first time ever. With a 211 million-strong subscription base, we’re pretty excited about it too! We wanted to thank McCann Erickson for mentioning our part in the creation of the app, which was developed using metaio’s powerful mobile software, available for free download on our website.

Both iOS and Android users can download the amazing IKEA Catalogue app for free(!) to discover all 43 pieces of augmented and activated content when the publication finally hits mail and IKEA stores around the world.

Check out all the great press around this innovative product catalog:

• http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/20/3171941/ikea-catalog-augmented-reality
• http://www.tabletpcblog.com/2012/07/ikea-beefs-up-2013-catalog-with-companion-ar-app-doesnt-translate-swedish-furniture-names-video/
• http://www.businessinsider.com/ikea-has-created-an-augmented-reality-catalogheres-todays-ad-brief-2012-7
• http://m.mobilemarketingmagazine.com/mobilemarketing/i/article/ikea-catalogue-moves-augmented-reality
• http://contently.com/blog/ikea-animates-its-print-catalog-with-digital-technology-video/
• http://mobilbranche.de/2012/07/ikea-katalog-wird-mit-augmented-reality-lebendig/19417
• http://creativity-online.com/news/mccannerickson-gives-new-ikea-catalog-a-vitamin-pill/236165
• http://www.digitalavmagazine.com/de/2012/07/20/ikea-incorpora-la-realidad-aumentada-a-su-nuevo-catalogo-para-2013/

And of course, don’t forget to watch this great video of the experience:

The new junaio: Letter from metaio CEO Thomas Alt

Dear metaio-eco-system,

Yesterday we have launched the new version 4.0 of junaio with a much cleaner UI, a new API and improved performance. Instead of giving you my view on how this will change the use of Augmented Reality for real world browsing, I will let the experts of the press speak for us:

 TheNextWeb: “…While there are a slew of apps that tap GPS, image recognition, visual search and other elements of augmented reality, Junaio does a good job of merging them all.”  http://goo.gl/2E3DV

Engadget: “…Junaio offers less ‘clunky’ apps, new API for developers…..In fact, Junaio really needs to have coffee with Project Glass…”  http://goo.gl/N1Fbr

Techcrunch: “….[Junaio] has made some major progress in simplifying the UI. Its new interface is much cleaner now and lets you get right to the camera view when the app starts up so you can immediately start scanning AR content, targets or QR codes   ….” http://goo.gl/FybFL

The New York Times: “… [The junaio] interface is in some ways a little simpler to navigate because of its on-screen icons.” http://goo.gl/VMoqI

 

 

It´s still early  – but please be invited to join our yearly conference InsideAR on October, 1^st  and 2^nd . At this year´s InsideAR we will focus on showing you how the Augmented Reality eco-system – from Chipset OEMs, Technology Providers, Content Providers to End-Consumers – will enable the massive adoption of Augmented Reality. More on this:  http://www.metaio.com/insidear/welcome/

Best regards,

Thomas Alt

CEO & Co-Founder, metaio 

Weekest Links Live Here Now

We have moved Weekest Links to the metaio blog for the time-being. While they live here, we will be sure to treat them to all of the amenities that they enjoyed on the junaio Blog.

 

 

metaio / junaio recap: 

Engadget takes our Next-Gen AR for an ARM-powered walk [story]

metaio named as company driving new business trends [story]

metaio highlighted as “One-to-Watch” in new innovation business report [story]

We welcomed 5 new Certified Developers to junaio [blog post]

junaio used as a tool for enhancing museum collections 

Certified Developer ARworks launches the Olympic Navigator for junaio 

Certified Developer EDDIEBOND releases Japanese junaio showreel 

 

From ARound: 

Augmented Reality used for giant interactive Korean Theme Park 

DARPA developing augmented reality contact lenses for soldiers [story]

Research and Markets releases new report on Prototyping AR [story]

General Mills CMO Mark Addicks really digs new technology [story]

 

Non-AR Pick of the Week: 

As we begin to better augment model cities, it is only fitting that we look in awe at one of the largest model cities in the world. Very amusing commentary as well: “Probably the world’s smallest airport!” Yes, it probably is.

 

 

 

AR Services for the City of Basel at the ISMAR 2011

From October 26^th to 29^th, the city of Basel in Switzerland is host to ISMAR 2011, the international conference on research, technology and application in Mixed and Augmented Reality. Part of the conference is the very interesting AR-4-Basel project, organized by PEREY Research & Consulting and its partners.

Model by VirtualcitySYSTEMS

The purpose of this project is to establish a framework in which creative professionals can push the envelope of what has been done in Smart Cities with 3D data sets and to showcase the first generation of services that are available to the public with smartphones during the ISMAR 2011.

The project coordinates resources in the city of Basel and internationally for the purpose of implementing real world mobile AR services, and receives the support of businesses, government agencies, municipal service providers, private and public institutes of learning. In order to help build AR based services for people in Basel and visitors to the conference, the project provides datasets of 3D city models (see image above). This is an interesting challenge for researchers and developers in the field of Augmented Reality. We at metaio are curious to see what our colleagues will present.

Current technology is advancing rapidly. While having a readymade 3D Model available is certainly useful for projecting AR overlays correctly aligned onto buildings or street views (we have been using those lots of times), our current approach at metaio however goes a step further. We now have technologies which can in fact create a model of reality on the spot, dynamically and at the very instant the user looks at the world through his smartphone camera. By using very advanced 3D optical recognition and tracking technologies we are able to capture and reconstruct the environment around the user without having to rely on a prefabricated city model. 3D objects can then be directly inserted into this “live” three-dimensional space in perfect perspective, alignment and occlusion.

It will allow people in the near future to walk through any cityscape with their smartphones and benefit from correctly aligned digital overlays and useful Augmented Reality information services as a completely natural experience. We call this the “Augmented City”. You may have seen this video, but we show it once more to illustrate the point:

insideAR 2011 Exhibition Highlights [Video]

Hopefully by now you’ve all seen the teaser video and read about the very, very cool announcements we made at insideAR this year. I honestly wish that I could adequately describe insideAR. Maybe it’s because I helped assemble and move 15-20 very heavy table. Maybe watching these camera arrays and industrial prototyping demos come to life, piece by piece gives one more of an appreciation in seeing the finished product. Maybe it was just my first time in Germany, combined with the anticipation of Oktoberfest in Bavaria, combined with the excitement of meeting all of the people with whom I’ve only ever communicated via Skype or telephone or email. Luckily, we don’t have to rely on my floundering attempts at description- we have videos!

This is the first clip of many that we plan to roll out over the coming days and weeks, demonstrating the current and future technologies under the hood (sometimes literally) of metaio.

insideAR was divided into various exhibition segments- one of these was called “Augmented Living”, where we demonstrated some of the potential uses of AR in the household, including the new junaio 3.0 SCAN release that allows the user to get pricing and ingredient information from grocery item barcodes. In that same area, we were also showing our Bosch 3D studio app for iPad that allows people to practically redesign their kitchens with new appliances- without ever leaving their homes.

Many attendees played around with the Around Me Geo Trivia junaio game is a very creative example of how gaming, education and mobile AR can work together to shape an engaging user experience. Sensor fusion takes elements that we tend to take for granted — orientation, geographical relative position, radial distance — and translates them into usable information- in this case, a very fun trivia game.

Our company was built on out-of-the-box industrial solutions, so it should be no surprise to see those prototyping examples in the above video. The sub-millimeter tracking with a guided camera-arm would allow any manufacturer the highest digital scrutiny in examining a prototype on the factory floor; and with the “window-to-the-world”-type 3D mapping you can overlay the original wireframe to the real-word object itself, regardless of its size. With this kind of technology, metaio is naturally bridging the industrial gap between the digital creation and the physical construction of a given product.

Really cool stuff we’re talking about here. Really cool.

Once again, we’re going to be rolling out all sorts of video in the near future, so be sure to either subscribe to this blog or to our YouTube channel (or both!) in order to stay posted.

Augmented Reality On Every Smartphone by 2014

If you haven’t heard from TechCrunch, Dexigner, or Augmented.org, this year’s insideAR brought some very significant developments for metaio. To sum it up, we made three important announcements to over 450(!) attendees:

• The release a free version of the Mobile SDK, soon to be integrated with a game engine
• The release of an AR-publishing tool, junaio Creator, to enable virtually anybody to create AR content for junaio
• Strategic partnerships with the leading chipset IP supplier ARM and mobile platform developer ST-Ericsson on joint R&D

What this means for the industry

Mobile SDK is now free

This is a big deal. AR is a young industry- we want to see it into adulthood. We want developers, researchers, students, newcomers etc to be able to test the limits of their imaginations and creativity with one of the most comprehensive and advanced mobile AR solutions out there. I can’t wait to watch these independent developers shape the future of AR applications in their endeavors.

The junaio Creator

User interface and workflow are two of the most important things that any software provider must consider- we want both of these aspects to be more streamlined, more convenient, more natural- and that’s why we announced the junaio Creator. It’s tool that takes all of the image recognition, the natural feature tracking, and the complex algorithms of junaio and reduces that magic to two simple words: point and click. Whether  you’re creating a junaio channel or utilizing our junaio Plugin to add a feature to an existing app, the junaio Creator allows you to do this without a single line of code. Check out the demo in the TechCrunch article and see for yourself.

Formal Collaborations with ARM & ST-Ericsson

I’ve been saying this for years: the surest way to enable the smoothest most immersive AR experiences is to ensure the optimization of the hardware. Though we’ve already been optimizing our software for these wonderful mobile devices that pepper our lives, metaio can now work directly with these processing and chipset providers to find the best way to ensure that mobile devices are AR-ready before they hit the shelves.

In closing

 

 

We have a genuine passion for what we do.  It may seem as though we ‘re making bold statements, but please understand that it comes from a shared excitement, an almost child-like fascination in its innocence at seeing dreams becoming reality, not just 3D and digital content (though we do that too).

Augmented Reality on Every Smartphone by 2014- It will be magic.

Magic.