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)

re:publica 2013 – Europe’s Biggest Digital Conference

From 6th till 8th of May the re:publica – Europe’s biggest conference on digital and social media – took place in Berlin. More than 5.000 attendees discussed three days about internet policy, network neutrality and the future of social media campaigns. The most controversial topic at the moment in Germany are the plans of the Deutsche Telekom, which announced already in the beginning of May, that they will choke the speed of the internet in the nearest future. The hosts of the re:publica, Markus Beckedahl, Johnny (@spreeblick) and Tanja Häusler (@elektrotanja) as well as Andreas Gebhard, called up the participants to appeal to their government to anticipate these plans: “Avoid that the Telekom introduces a 2nd class internet!” Tanja Häusler said: “If we can now afford limitations for the sake of commercial interests, if there are no more protests against these limitations, we have to realize, in fact, that the digital society is growing continously, but still, has no power to public opinion. “

IN/SIDE/OUT – The link between online and offline

The motto of this year reminds of the difficulty to connect people from the online and the offline world: “With this in mind, the motto IN/SIDE/OUT can be read as an upending of the digital society: Facebook is reaching one billion users, established newspapers are folding to the net-based competition, and Twitter, which was once the tool for alternative civilian war correspondence, is being utilised by militaries to communicate their combat targets. While we were always sure that at some point everyone would use the mechanisms offered by Web2.0, the question remains: Who profits in the end? Will citizens embrace obligations of governments and businesses to become more transparent, while at the same time tolerate the non-transparency of those companies which form the structures of the internet? Or will we soon pull the plug and return to a place where privacy is tangible again? Will we replace the INternet with an OUTernet?”

Sascha Lobo: Who’s afraid of Augmented Reality?

Lobo is one of Germany’s most established digital avantgardists, working as an author, columnist and speaker on digitial issues and net politics. He held his keynote on Monday not without mentioning an amazing technology such as augmented reality is. He is fascinated in AR, but honestly understands the fear of people, who don’t know what to expect about it: “It’s like the radioactivity of Internet. There has to come up a lot of awareness training on augmented reality in the future. At the moment it provokes fear on this invisible, unknown power. There is still an anxiety for the merge of the digital and real life.” He himself is enthusiatic about Ingress, an augmented reality game produced by NinanticLabs, which he played passionately in the last weeks: “It’s the most ‘nerdy’ game one can imagine.” Unfortunately, Ingress “guzzles” a lot of energy, but is lot of fun, he said.

Francesco Lapenta: A Critical look on Augmented Reality

Yesterday I’ve visited Francesco Lapenta‘s presentation with the amazing title “Mediated Life after Virtualization. A Critical Look at the Scenarios Forecast by New Wearable Augmented Reality Visualization Technologies.” He agreed so far with Lobo, that there is still a huge insecurity according to new wearable devices which are visualizing information. People usually have six senses and he imagines that all these senses should be combined in one mobile (augmenting) device such as for example Google Glass and giving real added value to people: “Our Augmented Reality device could interact with these machines, and there could be competetional power of different senses which could interact with your vision and offers you help to learn more.” But what does it really mean for us? He asked: “What will follow the inevitable technological peak and demise of old communication technologies such as the mobile and the screen? If the mobile embodied the newly acquired freedom from the constrained spaces of earlier mediated communications? New “seamless” and “immersive” technological evolutions will acquire social, cultural and market dominance while cannibalizing previous technological milestones very much like television did with photography, radio and cinema, and the computer did with them all. what are the consequences of a technology that does not pretend anymore to “simulate” reality or its visualization but now “naturally” creates the way we see the world and experience it?”

If you want to see the whole presentation, please watch the video:

I still feel overwhelmed by all these very great sessions at the re:publica and would like to recommend the #rp14 to you taking place on the May 5 – 7, 2014 in Berlin.

There was not enough time for me to attend in all events and if you are interested as well, we can also follow the re:publica YouTube channel with all presentations and keynotes.

Blog Carnival #IfIhadGlass from We Wear Smart Wear and metaio

As Google announced Project Glass last year, we thought this is the most logical step after the invention of smartphones and tablet-PCs. As digital natives we are either sleeping or online. But there are situations when we find mobile devices quite disturbing, for example during jogging, shopping or, let’s say cooking. With the Google Glasses we would have our hands free again and could use all of the applications which we already enjoy on our smartphones and can enjoy Augmented Reality.

Starting the 28th of February this year, Google started a competition “asking prospective Google Glass buyers to take to Twitter or Google+ using the #ifihadglass hashtag to explain why they deserve one of the first-ever Google Glass Explorer Editions” (Techcrunch.com). Eventually, the application phase was closed by Google after thousands of people reacted and shared their ideas.

The blog We Wear Smart Wear has started a Blog Carnival with the Hashtag #IfIhadGlass to continue asking for expectations and visions people have for using Smart Glasses. We, at Metaio, really like the idea of a BlogCarnival (Don’t know what it is? Have a look here!) and want to support it.

 We want to know from you and all our clients, developers and blog readers:

What would you do with Google Glasses? And what is your vision of Augmented Reality?  

Publish a short story or make a video on your blog about what you expect from Smart Glasses and send the link with the hashtag #IfIhadglass until 30th of April 2013  to press@metaio.com.

Please, link your article with http://www.wewearsmartwear.de! 

We will also collect all the blog entries and publish the best texts and videos on our Augmentedblog and on the Junaio Blog.

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!

insideAR 2012: Save the Date

Greetings metaio ecosystem,

We are very happy to invite you to this year’s insideAR, and to announce the first details about what will be an exciting and illuminating event for the Augmented Reality industry. We would love to have you join us in beautiful Munich for the most professional business-minded event in Augmented Reality and mobile high-tech.
The metaio team

insideAR 2012 –

Register before July 31 and save 20%

In the last 12 months the outlook for Augmented Reality as a mass technology has changed dramatically.
In August of 2011 metaio CTO Peter Meier introduced the first-ever optical recognition and tracking of a real world object on a consumer mobile device, as well as a dedicated technological and professional roadmap to make accessing digital information in the real world a more natural experience.
metaio later integrated 3-D object tracking into the free version of the metaio Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) and released it to the mobile developer community to enable and empower the next generation of mobile AR apps.
This year you will witness the next steps that will change the Augmented City from an idealized model into the real digital environment around you. metaio will show how a city, like Munich, can become truly augmented bringing digital information around you in an intuitive and natural interface. The real Augmented City will be created using more powerful but easier-to-use tools like junaio, or drag and drop AR creation tools such as the metaio Creator, which enables everyone to create Augmented Reality experiences with little or no technical knowledge.
Enter the future of the Augmented City at insideAR 2012 and learn how the digital world becomes natural experience.

Technology and Case Studies -

The Exhibition at insideAR

metaio will give an exclusive first look at upcoming products, as well as insight into the latest advancements in the popular metaio Mobile SDK. Since its inception, insideAR has had the reputation for unveiling and announcing new technology and advances that have always been the cutting edge of vision based interactions. insideAR has always been the event to attend to see state-of-the-art Augmented Reality technology applied in real-world environments and situations.
As the technology leading AR company, metaio will present the results of European research projects VENTURI, EFA 2014 and CRUMBS, which show future scenarios of integrated Augmented Reality use.
metaio and its certified partners deliver hundreds of AR applications every year. Each use-case provides a specific solution for a specific problem. The exhibition at insideAR 2012 will give attendees a hands-on learning experience for integrated AR applications. The companies behind these projects will assist you on the implementation of potential AR projects into your business.

Sponsors and Exhibitors –

insideAR your business platform

Take the opportunity to present your business and your recent innovations at insideAR, one of the most important Augmented Reality conferences worldwide. Meet the pioneers and leaders in the field of Augmented Reality. The high-level interaction and the direct contact with visiting professionals give you the opportunity to experience and discuss solutions in practical environments. From potential customers to experienced service providers and technology specialists, insideAR is the only event that brings together all aspects of the Augmented Reality industry.
Present your products and services to top decision-makers and opinion leaders increasing the visibility of your company within the international Augmented Reality community. Learn more about the options to present your business by contacting us atinsideAR [at] metaio [dot] com.

The Elite of Augmented Reality –

Presentations and Keynotes

As every year, the leaders and visionaries of the AR industry will be on stage to present current achievements in technology, business, implementation and integration of Augmented Reality.
Past years speakers and presenters have included luminaries from world-renowned hardware companies like Nokia, ST-Ericsson, NVIDIA, ARM, Sony, as well as representatives from industry-proven agencies like Porter Novelli and Resource Interactive.
We are still searching and evaluating lists of potential speakers and keynotes to ensure we have a quality, curated list for all of our attendees. If you’d like to nominate a speaker or submit a speaking proposal, please contact us atinsideAR [at] metaio [dot] com.

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.

 

 

 

The best SDK on the [Augmented] Planet!

This song should play every time something inspirational happens. Ever.

Augmented Planet, one of our favorite AR blogs, has released the results of their 2011 Reader’s Choice Awards, with metaio winning 2 categories and placing in two others.

Readers chose our junaio interactive TV experience with Galileo for Best AR Marketing Campaign. Even better, they chose the now famous / infamous Red Bull Racing experience developed by our partner Circ.us as the runner-up.

metaio also took home the trophy for Best AR Developer Took Kit for the free metaio Mobile SDK. Released only two weeks ago, we’ve seen a phenomenal response and interest in developers that exceeded our expectations. This most recent award is the Gravity-Aligned icing on the cake after such a great year.

Make sure to check out the links above to see all of the results of this year’s Readers Choice Awards and learn more about all the exciting things we did this year.

Free At Last: the metaio Mobile SDK

We are pretty darn excited.

Back in September, CEO Dr. Thomas Alt announced that we’d be releasing a free version of the metaio Mobile Software Development Kit (SDK) in an effort to both ensure and encourage the massive development and adoption of mobile augmented reality by 2014.

In that time, we researched and developed like crazy to make sure that our software would be the most advanced mobile solution available. We implemented Gravity Aware Feature Descriptors, a patented technology that makes image recognition and tracking faster and more robust. We benchmarked our technology by winning the 2011 ISMAR Tracking Competition. We integrated Unity3D for hardcore game developers and designers. And most importantly, we embarked on collaborative research partnerships with chipset providers like ARM, ST-Ericcson, and Texas Instruments. It’s been a busy fall.

As a result, we have for the entire mobile development community a powerful, advanced and industry-proven SDK, free of cost right from the start, with unlimited app-deployments for iOS and Android. A built-in advanced 3D rendering engine means you can start developing immediately. And it’s not a watered-down piece of shareware- this 3D rendering engine has been used in over 70 professional mobile apps, including our Augmented City demo.

This is the same software that has driven over 10 million downloads and enables millions of magazines delivered every month with mobile AR content.

We’re either completely crazy- or very, very passionate about what we do. Maybe it’s a little bit of both.

Read the press release.

Download the SDK.

Get excited.

insideAR 2011: CEO Dr. Thomas Alt

Over the next couple of weeks we’ll be rolling out videos from this year’s insideAR. For those of you who weren’t able to make it, we hosted a fantastic event with over 500 registrations- almost twice the attendees from last year. This is a clear sign of not only a growing interest in AR, but proof that metaio has made significant progress in the last year.

Dr. Thomas Alt, CEO and Co-Founder of metaio, kicked off the event this year with a welcome speech that announced a few key statements:

• Augmented Reality will be on every smartphone by 2014
• In order to facilitate this massive adoption, metaio will release a free version of the metaio Mobile SDK
• metaio is investing in collaborative partnerships with chipset manufacturers and OEMs and hardware providers like ARM and ST-Ericsson.

Based on statistics and predictions for both smartphone use and mobile AR revenue growth, metaio believes that AR on every capable mobile device by 2014 is something that we can readily achieve. But in order to foster growth on such a scale, it is necessary to become a leader in innovation rather than just a product. That’s why  Dr. Alt announced that metaio would release a completely free version of its Mobile SDK to the entire developer ecosystem.

 

 

By putting these advanced tools directly in the hands of developers, we hope to spark a new genesis of mobile AR development. We are doubly focused on collaborative research partnerships with chipset manufacturers to ensure that the mobile devices carrying these experiences are fully optimized for AR before they hit shelves.

2014 isn’t as far away as it seems. We sincerely believe that working towards these goals will further the industry and lead to progress and innovation.

Stay tuned for more insideAR videos, and check the links above for more information. And don’t forget to watch Dr. Alt’s keynote from last year as well.

We built this city on A and R

 

 

(Apologies for the reference, but it had to be done)

While everyone here in the lovely city of San Francisco was preparing Halloween costumes, metaio was at the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality presenting research that will not only enable an actual Augmented City, but will lead to more natural, more subtle augmentations of the physical world.

 

Tracking

metaio has made substantial improvements in mobile optical tracking and recognition, having implemented both 3D object recognition and Gravity-Aligned feature descriptors (GAFD). Through complex algorithms and sensor-fusion, we are able to align the field of vision of the smartphone with gravity. That means no matter where or how the user is positioned, his or her smartphone will always understand “up” and “down” as constants instead of relative positions. Looking at the photo above, you can see that natural feature tracking fell short in trying to describe surfaces buildings- all the windows look the same and there is little variability or contrast in the overall facade. Before GAFD, identifying or isolating only one or two of those windows would have been nearly impossible- defining gravity as a constant however allows the tracking to easily identify each individual window.  Check out the video below for a visual demonstration- you’ll notice that the tracking is faster, smoother, more robust, and above all more natural. Note also that we can align individual elements of a given 3D model with gravity, allowing 3D models and animations to behave more realistically when placed in the real world.

 

 

metaio also debuted 3D object recognition and tracking for the first time on a mobile device running on a consumer application: junaio. Not a specifically engineered research platform or prototype, but an iOS and Android application free to download and more importantly, free to develop. And in its first appearance, 3D tracking on junaio won the ISMAR Tracking Competition.

3D object tracking is the obvious next step for mobile AR- though printed 2D images provide a wealth of material for launching AR experiences, being able to track actual real-world objects will open up a whole world of opportunities for placing useful, engaging, and interactive content in the physical world. Combined with GAFD, objects like buildings, automobile engines, complex industrial prototypes, groceries, billboards, and public transportation vehicles become the canvases for the digital world.

 

3D Reconstruction

In order to have real-time, natural and subtle augmentations of the real world it is imperative that we able to understand and digitally reconstruct our immediate environments. For instance, a realistic digital or virtual piece of furniture placed into a physical room needs to behave as though it is real. You would expect an object in front of it to obscure it, and vice versa. Until recently, the placing of virtual objects into the real world in real-time has been restricted to the foreground of the user’s perspective. metaio however presented at ISMAR research that show the instantaneous online, real-time learning of 3D environments in order to realistically display or remove virtual objects from the physical world. This kind of technology will eventually allow prospective homeowners to furnish an entire house or apartment the first time they step across the threshold, or allow for the construction of truly immersive, realistic AR gaming environments.  Watch the video below to see it in action- note how the camera actually learns its surroundings in real-time, and within seconds adjusts to make a given virtual object or animation appear realistically in reference to surrounding real world objects.

 

 

If you build it…

metaio is well aware that in order to see stellar use cases, engaging content, and disruptive interfaces that this kind of technology needs to be in the hands of both creators and users. That’s why all of this research will soon be available through junaio (now, assuredly, the world’s most advanced AR browser) and the advanced metaio Mobile SDK (which if you haven’t heard has a free version coming soon).  We here at metaio believe that Augmented Reality as a whole is far too vast, multi-faceted and diverse to be unified under a sole “Killer App”. That’s why we’re giving people the tools to investigate, experiment, and explore all aspects of this wonderful technology to expand on all potential applications of AR.

For more information, see the press release, as well as some of the articles written about our research in the past few days:

Singularity Hub, “The Latest Updates to Augmented Reality: 3D and Gravity”

TechCrunch, “Metaio Adds Gravity To Their Augmented Reality Platform”