Registration is open for the Augmented World Expo, June 4-5 (formerly ARE). Use code AWE3META to get a special discount, courtesy of Metaio [registration]
Meet Metaio at the Augmented Reality Summit, June 20th in London [event site]
Interested in speaking, sponsoring or attending InsideAR, the most exciting event in the augmented reality industry? Contact us! [event site]
pick of the week: Oblivion
You’ve probably already seen the trailer, but we’re just tickled to see yet another Tom Cruise movie that features egregious exposure of CGI Augmented Reality.
If you haven’t already heard the news, we went and did something no one has ever done before- Metaio has successfully designed and released a chipset architecture for accelerating augmented reality experiences on semiconductor platforms (like the chips in smartphones).
To coincide with the 2013 Mobile World Congress, we released the third edition of the InsideAR Augmented Reality Magazine featuring the all-new AREngine. If you missed picking one up at MWC, you can download the full version at the previous link, but I thought I’d post our cover story right here. So without further ado, here is the story on the “shot-heard-round-the-world” of the entire Augmented Reality Industry:
Nearly a decade ago, to the day, Thomas Alt and Peter Meier founded Metaio with the intent of advancing Augmented Reality (AR) as the primary interface for experiencing the digital and online worlds. This was a time when the most popular mobile device’s (the Nokia 1100) features were limited to SMS and a calculator. The dawn of the era of the smartphone really did change everything for the Augmented Reality industry, as suddenly the average user could experience through mobile cameras the same visual elements formerly restricted to factory-floor AR installations running on offline high-powered PCs.
Back then it was clear that computer vision and Augmented Reality experiences would greatly benefit from optimizing the software for individual handsets and chipset platforms. It was then that Metaio embarked on developing relationships with OEMs, handset manufacturers and chipset platforms in order to one day realize a fully optimized device, ready for Augmented Reality from the moment the consumer removes it from the shelf.
Despite hardware limitations, Metaio was able to make leaps and bounds with applied research and lowlevel optimizations. Their award-winning R&D team was responsible for the first commercial deployment of 3-D tracking and recognition on a mobile device. Metaio’s engineers were also the first to align a given smartphone camera with gravity, educating the sensor on how to better perceive its surroundings like the human eye. In fact, Metaio has made incredible software developments in 2012 alone.
In 2009, it was no less than a technological feat to get a top-of-the-line HD camera connected to an offline desktop PC to recognize a single pre-designed image and render a single 3-D model in real-time. With the latest low-level optimizations, Metaio has achieved recognizing 100 unique images and overlaying 100 unique 3-D models, all on a mobile device. If Metaio can accomplish these things without having any prior access to the processors and sensors inside these devices, imagine what mobile users could do with a fully AR-ready smartphone.
Whether it’s Google’s Project: Glass concept or popular movies like Minority Report or Terminator, nearly all of the popular references to Augmented Reality depict an “always on” interface. The camera is constantly scanning, detecting, recognizing and overlaying information and content onto the real world. In order to achieve this vision (something Metaio refers to as the “Augmented City”) of ubiquitous interaction, it is imperative that the groups developing the hardware are working with those developing the software.
For this reason, Metaio began developing a piece of hardware IP now known as the “AREngine”, an architecture designed specifically to accelerate Augmented Reality performance in mobile hardware, and one of Metaio’s longstanding platform partners, ST-Ericsson, will be the first to adopt and deploy it on silicon. The AREngine will propel Augmented Reality into the future and will do for the industry what the addition of the GPU did for the gaming industry.
Before the populace sports head mounted displays that resemble eyeglasses; before society adopts wearable computing; before contact lenses come in 16, 32 and 64 gigabyte models; before we exist in an Augmented World – there must be the first step. The future of Augmented Reality starts now with the first ever introduction and implementation of the AREngine.
Welcome to always on, always augmented - powered by Metaio.
SAN FRANCISCO – FEBRUARY 21, 2013: Metaio today announces an agreement with ST-Ericsson, a leader in wireless platforms and semiconductors. Under the terms of the agreement, ST-Ericsson will integrate Metaio’s Augmented Reality hardware IP, the so-called “AREngine,” into the next generation of ST-Ericsson mobile platforms resulting in the first application processor accelerating Augmented Reality performance on mobile devices.
Metaio’s cutting-edge technology inserts nearly any 3-D and virtual content into the real world by recognizing images, objects and entire environments. In a mobile future that clearly requires smart devices to be ‘always on’ and connected, the Metaio AREngine drastically reduces power consumption making all-day AR experiences possible… read more.
Are you headed to Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress?
Members of the Metaio team will be located at various booths and locations throughout Mobile World Congress 2013. For locations of the Metaio booth and sponsor booths visit www.metaio.com/mwc or download the Metaio @MWC 2013 map below. If you would like to schedule a meeting with one of the team members from Metaio, visit www.metaio.com/mwc and fill out the meeting request form at the bottom of the page.
Many team members from Metaio will be on hand at MWC 2013 at various booths throughout the exhibition halls. Meet the team behind the Augmented Reality technologies shaping the future of how we interact with digital information in the real-world. Visit our booth at MWC and get the chance to meet:
Thomas Alt, CEO of Metaio
Daniel Gelder, SVP Marketing
Sudhanshu Kapoor, BD Manager – OEM’s
Trak Lord, Marketing & Media Relations
And last but not least, don’t miss us at the 2013 Global Mobile Awards Ceremony, Tuesday, February 26 in Hall 4 at the Gran Fira in Barcelona. For more information, check out our last blog post.
We’ll be posting news and updates live from the floor of Mobile World Congress, so make sure to stay tuned on our Twitter and Facebook feeds. And who knows, we might even have time to write a couple posts about our experiences there next week.
Galileo, popular ProSeiben network show, did a feature on Metaio and Augmented Reality [video]
New Tutorial video for junaio for non-programmers [video]
Augmented Reality Interface for Spatial Anatomical Education [blog]
Diego and Dario in Augmented Reality at insideAR 2012 [blog]
upcoming events
insideAR, Oct 1-2 in Munich will feature speakers from Lego and Ikea, among numerous others – register today and don’t miss this exciting augmented reality event [newsletter]
In case you’re curious about the culture of the Oktoberfest, check out the full version of the infographic above [right here]
Trak Lord will be delivering the keynote presentation for the mobile developer M3 Conference, Oct 25-26, Columbus, OH [event site]
Metaio will be presenting at the upcoming Connected Enterprise event in Dana Point, California Nov 9-11 [event site]
Our CFO Andreas Wiedmann will be presenting at TOC Frankfurt on “Innovations in Sales and Marketing”, October 9 (“TOCPartner20TSpeaker” for 20% off registration [event site]
The largest Augmented Reality Event in Canada, OARN is a can’t miss for the industry- Oct 5-6, Toronto (get $25 off admission with discount code METAIOSAVE25) [event site]
there are things that are happening
Google’s Project: Glass made a surprising appearance on the runway during New York’s Fashion Week, with Diane Von Furstenberg, of all people [article]
UK company’s augmented reality glasses could be better than Google’s [article]
There’s a new iPhone 5 and it’s selling like hotcakes [article]
Recently, an enterprising young high school junior spent his summer vacation developing an augmented reality interface for visualizing anatomical assets using the metaio Mobile SDK. He entered it into the National Public Radio “What’s Your Big Idea” Science competition, in which the videos with the most “likes” on YouTube progressed to the finals. The voting close August 19, and we’re happy to announce that Nishant Jain’s video had 264 likes! Thanks to everyone who supported Nishant in his quest for his big idea, and if you’re just hearing this now see the full story below, as well as Nishant’s video entry.
“Ask high school student Nishant Jain what he did over the summer and you won’t hear the usual lifeguard duty story. Jain, who will be a junior at Monta Vista High School in Cupertino CA, spent his vacation building a novel virtual reality system for use in anatomical education. With his work on the project, which uses the Augmented Reality SDK developed by Metaio, he hopes to greatly improve access to effective medical education for students from around the world.
Nishant worked with Professor William Paul Brown and Matthew Hasel in the Division of Clinical Anatomy at Stanford University to build this augmented reality anatomy learning tool as part of a summer internship. Additional support was provided by Pankaj Sharma and Joel Sadler, PhD candidates in the Division.
When asked about the direction that Augmented Reality was heading, Jain stated, “Augmented Reality has the potential to revolutionize education. I feel that the future lies in exponential technologies such as Virtual Reality and Haptic Interfaces. I am so thankful that I was given the opportunity to work with all of these amazing people in the Division of Clinical Anatomy. All of my mentors in the lab have been extremely supportive, and they have truly opened my eyes to all the possibilities that are out there.”
Jain has submitted his project to the NPR “What’s Your Big Idea” Science Competition and the public judging process is currently underway. His video about the project is currently online at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goDMTYzJOQw“
IKEA will be joining us at insideAR 2012 – will you? [event site][photos]
there are things that are happening
Someone leaked a video of what could possibly be the iPhone 5- is it real? Is it a huge hoax? You be the judge [video]
4 Ideas That Will Change Augmented Reality, by Helen Papagiannis of @ARstories [post]
Picks of the week
Because you were all so patient while us Americans enjoyed our Labor Day, you get not one, but two picks of the week courtesy of the myself. And the internet. Enjoy!
Roller Coaster Tycoon in Real Life
Game We Play
(can’t think of better examples of how to seamlessly weave AR into real life through gaming)
South Asian Television broadcaster Zee TV and interactive agency Xenium worked together to develop this wonderful augmented reality experience to promote the upcoming horror show, “Fear Files“, using the metaio Design software.
Installed at a popular shopping mall, participants were treated to a “ghostly” experience as they entered the darkened, covered area where they were greeted with only a large television screen featuring a live camera feed of the participants, mirroring their movements and stance.
When they stepped on the designated floor marker, a ghost child began to appear, as though he were there in real life, creeping out behind the person standing there. Then the scary music started playing, the child would make a “curse” gesture and the participant or participants would just disappear.
Said a representative of Xenium, “In the end the participants were stunned with the experience, with long lasting fear lingering in mind.”
(Mission accomplished)
Check out the video and the links above for more information! And of course you’ll be able learn more about these awesome augmented reality projects, and more like them at our upcoming Augmented Reality conference, insideAR, Oct 1-2 in Munich. We hope you can join us!
Each year metaio unveils the latest advances in the exciting field of Augmented Reality (AR). Business and technology professionals come from all over the world to see the newest industrial installations, the latest mobile app developments, wearable computing prototypes, and futuristic projects straight from the R&D labs of metaio and its international network of partners. Come explore the impossible at insideAR 2012, October 1-2 in Munich Germany.
“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” - Arthur C. Clarke
Curious to know whom the speakers and presenters will be at this year’s insideAR? Well your wait is over as we are announcing the following leaders and visionaries in the field of Augmented Reality who will be joining us to present various topics related to their expertise and interest in Augmented Reality.
Olav Gjerlufsen: Director Digital Producers at LEGO
…and many more!
Interested in lending your voice? Contact us at insidear@metaio.com
See the latest technology in the AR Live Expo
Join us in the insideAR Exhibition hall for Augmented Reality experiences from metaio, our partners and certified developers. Learn more about the development tools and meet our Certified Developers in the Developer Lounge.
Try out the latest examples and applications using the metaio Mobile SDK and junaio. See best-practice use-cases from various industries, such as retail, print, digital marketing and automotive, implementing AR solutions. Last, but definitely not least, learn what the future holds for the vision of an Augmented City, both indoors and out!
Interested in showcasing your technology? Contact us at insidear@metaio.com
Take part in our Free Workshops and Learn from the Best
For the first time ever at insideAR, metaio will be hosting interactive workshops on specific technical and business use cases for Augmented Reality technology. Come learn best practices from the most professional and advanced AR team in the world.
For App Developers: Getting started creating your Mobile Augmented Reality apps based upon metaio AR technology solutions
For junaio Developers: junaio AR experiences integrating AREL (Augmented Reality Experience Language)
For Everyone: Everything you want to know about tracking real-world objects in AR and where does the future take us.
For Publishers: Simplified Augmented Reality for publishing using the metaio Creator
For Marketers: How to market and sell your products and services using the power of Augmented Reality
What is included with an insideAR Conference Pass…
2 full days of access to the insideAR Augmented Reality Conference
Food and Drinks while the conference is in session
Free access to various workshops and sessions
Discounts and Special Offers
*Special pricing on tickets for students
*Free entrance for the press and metaio Partners.
15% Bring a Friend Discount – After purchasing a ticket, you will receive a special code which you can give to friends and colleagues which will give them 15% off of their ticket purchase.
Congratulations to mediagrand on winning a Custom metaio Mobile SDK [blog]
Did you win a trip to gamescom? Learn more about the project from Augmented Minds [blog]
Business Development Manager Brendan Scully waxes poetic in his interview with ARNews.tv [video]
There’s still time to “Take Part” in the 2012 Samsung Take Part: 2012 Augmented Reality Android games [download]
IKEA Augmented Reality Catalog is a step in the right direction [article]
*Certified Developer Digital Delta Design released a new promo video that features junaio at Weddings [videos]
Hey, you! Yes- you. Don’t forget to update to the latest version of junaio! [article]
insideAR 2012- the best augmented reality conference around, conveniently scheduled to coincide with Oktoberfest. Check out pictures from last year… [photos]
Cyborg America: inside the strange new world of basement body hackers [article]
EyeRing, voice-activated augmented reality tool for the blind- wait what? [video]
Disney researches add virtual touch to the real [video]
pick of the week eternity – “Sight”
If you haven’t already seen this, you probably think Augmented Reality will always be fluffy marketing gimmicks. I’m truly sorry to have to forever shatter your rosy view of the universe.
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:
Posted by Trak 
