ITU Telecom World 2011 is a gathering of leading industry players, government heads, digital innovators and technological talents – focused on applying the power of connected technology to real-world issues.
Young start-ups, like metaio, are often responsible for some of the best innovative ideas and disruptive technologies, many of which can make the world better, smarter, safer and more productive. Invited to speak at the ITU Telecom World 2011, Peter Meier (CTO) presented some ideas of how Augmented Reality could help people in under-developed parts of the world, such as Africa, in their struggle to build viable economies.
One of the key issues is in fact equipment maintenance. While international economic aid occasionally provides new equipment for local factories, the ongoing maintenance of industrial installations, production equipment or fleets of trucks becomes a real problem. Production rates then drop after a while due to equipment failure simply because local workers have not been properly trained for maintenance or do not speak English and are thus unable to read the manuals.
In these countries mobile internet connections are often more reliable than landlines. This is where Augmented Reality could be of real help. With a mobile device, AR object recognition technology would identify the equipment to be maintained, and then integrate into the camera view easy to understand graphic overlays (like a virtual spanner) which would point out to the worker exactly which screws are to be loosened or which pipes are to be disconnected for proper servicing.
Who needs a manual? A picture says more than a thousand words, after all.
metaio is pleased to announce that the latest version of our Design software is now available for download.
Once again, AR is neither a sci-fi fantasy nor something limited to gimmicky one-off applications. Our design software enables anyone with a Windows PC to produce rich, interactive content. Our clients and partners use Design in trade shows, integrated marketing campaigns, classrooms, commercial applications, internal demonstrations and much more.
If you’re not already familiar with Design, you may have heard about our wonderful project with LEGO, now deployed in every LEGO-branded store in the world.
For the new 2.5 update we’ve rolled out the following updates:
New features:
Facetracking: for tracking a users face and overlaying3D content (e.g. hats, glasses etc.)
Extensible tracking: for tracking in unknown environments the system automatically creates and updates an internal map of features for tracking based on the camera image. This allows you to move around freely with your camera and the system adjusts on the fly.
A Design license (post-activation) is bound to the user’s PC, so moving / transferring the license is not allowed. There are however cases where a user would need to transfer a license, such as when uploading to a new machine. Starting with Design 2.5, license holders will have the ability to transfer their licenses twice.
To send a request or purchase a license dongle, contact sales (at) metaio (dot) com.
To transfer your license, go here. Enter your activation key and click Get Licenses.
This Saturday, December 4th 2010, metaio’s entire U.S team will meet and greet with fellow augmented reality experts!
The Bay Area Augmented Reality Development Camp is a free, open-format un-conference for the Augmented Reality community. AR DevCamp will look at the entire AR stack from core components & standards to productization, strategy, ethnography, and futures.
This year’s meeting of the minds will take place at Gray Area Foundation For The Arts, also known as GAFFTA in San Francisco.
Suggested topics for this year include but are not limited to:
civic & industrial implementations, support for sensor networks & the Internet of Things
We held a conference, called “insideAR”, with focus on current practical applications in marketing and industry as well as on the future of this exciting field, which is being identified by many analysts as one of the most disruptive technologies of the years to come. 250 attendees from many countries and industries were able to follow insightful presentations by Intel, Nokia, Siemens and others about their company`s contributions and plans regarding AR. As the many money-earning practical applications on display during the conference demonstrated, Augmented Reality is definitely here to stay and has found its place in everyday life. metaio, as conference host, took opportunity to present its view of market opportunities, its vision of a seamless interconnection between the real and the digital world, and the kind of advanced technologies available already or being developed at the metaio labs at this point in time.
Unfortunately there is not an augmented me or two, helping me with responding to journalists, speaking at conferences or maintaining our website and other channels. If there was, I could write way more blog posts and wouldn´t have to give you the following link and case list. But there is happening so much, that I have to do it like this:
We are very proud to announce the final program of insideAR, which you can find: here. We will have speakers from NOKIA, Intel, RTT or Volkswagen and many superb best practice and future of AR demos. For all of those, who would like to attend spontaneously: there´s some space left. For all the others: we will set up a media library 1-2 days after the event and share all the demos and keynotes / workshops with you. So stay tuned!
My Nokia Blog tells us, that junaio soon is coming to the Ovi store and that there was a showcase on Nokia´s N8 at this year´s Nokia World!
And junaio is mentioned in another correlation with a big brand: it has been used as the navigation tool and pocket guide at the IDF Intel Developer Forum. Here you can see a little teaser, video to follow soon.
Finally: we have produced a new showreel, also summing up our latest cases, I think images say more than 1000 words:
Hey, there´s at least 5 things you can do with junaio and LLA markers. And when you add the “glue” function, with image processing on your iPhone to the receipe, the possibilities are endless. One example which was sent to me some minutes ago by the architects from “puregruppe” makes this so visible. They emphasized a product presentation and visualized the context sensitive concept in a nice way. And maybe this will hit the real streets pretty soon. You could stand there and flip through various virtual models within the real construction yard! Taking into account, that everybody can create his or her own use-case in his own channel through the open API I am really looking forward to many more updates from the growing junaio eco-system. What will board game publishers do, what ideas will advertisers have and … Have a nice and inspiring weekend!
Just wanted to share the latest coverage from our technology fair this year. Of course it is not like ISMAR, but we had 180 guests from around 25 countries, 30 live-demos and a lot of interesting new ideas and projects coming up. Maybe see you netx year …
Following this claim by Rouli and inspired by a chat with Thomas I wanted to post something completely different this time. And maybe there will evolve a little series. The video below gives you some insight on how you can use augmented reality in the production process of a car. Combined with a measurement arm you can visually overlay CAD data for example on prototypes and assist the technician. It simplifies the consultation process within production stakeholders and helps avoiding very expensive mistakes. So, maybe I sound a little uncool, but on the one hand we should keep in mind, that augmented reality can help saving ressources, improve the quality of work and help building better products. And on the other hand: industrial scenarios are also prolific for catchy-fancy marketing applications, because the requirements on the core technology are very high, thus the systems in general get more stable and more flexible. Does that sound like a (german) software car engineering campaign? Sorry for that – it´s my heritage…
One of the key issues is in fact equipment maintenance. While international economic aid occasionally provides new equipment for local factories, the ongoing maintenance of industrial installations, production equipment or fleets of trucks becomes a real problem. Production rates then drop after a while due to equipment failure simply because local workers have not been properly trained for maintenance or do not speak English and are thus unable to read the manuals.
Posted by Ulf 
