A letter sent to Apple Developer Relations.

Dear Apple,

We are a collection of augmented reality (AR) enthusiasts and professionals (from business and academia), who have been working on a multitude of AR apps for the iPhone. These apps are poised to change the way people interact with the real world.

But here is the rub: we are currently unable to publish these apps on the app store because the iPhone SDK lacks public APIs for manipulating live video.

We are asking Apple to provide a public API to access live video in real time, on the iPhone.
We will be happy to offer additional technical details.

The impact of augmented reality (AR) on our lives could be as significant as the introduction of the PC.
In 10 years, we believe augmented reality will change the way everyone experiences travel, design, training, personal productivity, health care, entertainment, games, art, and advertising (videos).

Looking back just a few years, AR pioneers had to hack a slew of components into ridiculously large backpacks and HUDs, and be confined to rigged environments. Nowadays, it comes in friendly, affordable packages and the iPhone is one of the first devices to have it all – except for a public API.

The battle to determine the winning device has already begun; a public API to access live video will give the iPhone a lucrative ticket to compete.
We believe Apple has a window of opportunity of about 3 months before developers start looking elsewhere. If Apple decides to publish the API in that time frame – in the next 10 years, everyone might be using the iPhone as the preferred device to interact with the real world.

Here is how augmented reality could open up new opportunities for the iPhone this year:

Arf (Georgia Tech)

a virtual pet you take anywhere

ARghhhh (Georgia Tech)

first person table-top action game

Sekai Camera (Tonchidot)

AirTag the real world

Kweekies (int13)

a portal to creatures in a parallel world

Layar (SPRXmobile)

Browse the world with an AR browser – Details

Artoolkit for the iPhone (Artoolworks)

the most popular AR kit now on the iPhone

StudierStube ES (Imagination, Graz TU)

the only AR engine designed for mobile devices, now on iPhone – Details

PTAM on the iPhone (Oxford University)

next generation AR tracking with no markers or images

Wikitude (Mobilizy)

a travel guide that “tells you what you see”

Virtual Santa (Metaio)

interactive Christmas application using the augmented reality

Augmented Reality Sightseeing (Fraunhofer IGD)

Historic photographs overlaid on your field of view while strolling in a street

These are apps that are practically ready to go. There is a whole bunch of apps and games that are just waiting for the API to be available.

…And Apple, we know you can’t share your plans…so please surprise us soon!

Many many thanks for your consideration -
Sincerely,

Signed:
Michael Gervautz – Managing Director Imagination GesmbH
Robert Rice – CEO Neogence
Georg Klein – PhD PTAM creator from Oxford University
Stephane Cocquereaumont -  President & Lead Developer Int13 (Kweekies)
Maarten Lens-FitzGerald – Founder & Partner SPRXmobile, developer of Layar
Ori Inbar – Author of GamesAlfresco.com and CEO and founder – Ogmento (formerly Pookatak Games)
Philippe Breuss – Lead developer, Mobilizy
Philip R. Lamb – CTO, Artoolworks
Noora Guldemond – Metaio
Takahito Iguchi – CEO, Tonchidot
Blair MacIntyre – Associate Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology

Bruno Uzzan – CEO, Total Immersion
Michael Zoellner – Fraunhofer IGD
Andrea Carignano – CEO,  Seac02

If you are developing an AR app for the iPhone and wish to join this effort – just let us know.

Tish Shute continues with her enlightening series of interviews on UgoTrade. After previously interviewing Ori Inbar and Robert Rice, Blair MacIntyre was a natural choice.
MacIntyre discusses his work at Georgia Tech (which I briefly wrote about here), and shares his perspective on future directions for mobile augmented reality.

A lot of folks think it will be tourist applications where there’s models of times square and models of central park and models of Notre Dame and the big square around that area in paris and along the river and so on, or the models of Italian and Greek history sites – the virtual Rome. As those things start happening and people start building onto the edges, and when Microsoft Photosynth and similar technologies become more pervasive you can start building the models of the world in a semi-automated way from photographs and more structured, intentional drive-by’s and so on. So I think it’ll just sort of happen. And as long there’s a way to have the equivalent of Mosaic for AR, the original open source web browser, that allows you to aggregate all these things. It’s not going to be a Wikitude. It’s not going to be this thing that lets you get a certain kind of data from a specific source, rather it’s the browser that allows you to link through into these data sources.

Read it all over here (and check some of the interesting links featured in the interview).
Curiously enough, a video of one of the games mentioned in the article, “Art of Defense“, was uploaded to Youtube today. It’s an interesting research in how people interact when playing a collaborative AR game (see Bragfish for a similar research with a competitive game):

Reporting live from GDC 2009 in San Francisco: it’s just getting better!

From Blair’s team at GA Tech:

Zombie Attack on Nvidia Tegra

From Beyond Reality at the Dutch pavilion:

Pit Strategy

Stay tuned for more…

This post is directed at you. Yes – you: the augmented reality aficionado.

For those who followed my coverage of ISMAR 2008 – prepare to be blown away by ISMAR 2009.

If you are an AR researcher – ISMAR 2009 is as always the best event to learn about the latest and greatest in AR technology.

If you work in the AR industry – congratulations! Unlike previous years – at ISMAR 2009 you’ll see AR breaking out into commercial success.

If you work in interactive entertainment – come to ISMAR 2009 to experience the phenomen that will revolutionize interactive entertainment forever.

If you are an artist – at ISMAR 2009 you’ll have an opportunity to join this emerging industry and change the way people experience the world, literally.

Interested? Good.

Because all of the above will only transpire – if YOU contribute.

ISMAR 2009 is now officially calling for proposals.

Here are excerpts from the call for proposals. For details check out the official call.

The veteran Science and Technology track will be complemented this year with new Arts, Media and Humanities tracks. ISMAR 2009 will introduce expanded Tutorials, Workshops, Demonstrations and Competitions.

Topics of the Technical Track:

• Sensing – Tracking technologies, calibration methods, sensor fusion, vision-based registration and tracking, acquisition of 3D scene descriptions
• Information presentation – Object overlay and spatial layout techniques, handling of occlusions or x-ray vision, photorealistic augmentation, real-time augmentation, optical display technologies (HWDs, HMDs, HUDs, mobile projectors), aural or haptic augmentation, combined presentation across several displays (combining mobile and stationary devices), display and view management
• User interaction – Interaction techniques and metaphors for MR/AR, collaborative MR/AR, multimodal input and output, tangible interaction, combined interaction with virtual and real objects
• Human factors – Usability studies and experiments of MR/AR-based interaction and presentation concepts, acceptance of MR/AR technology, social implications
• System architecture – Wearable and mobile computing, distributed and collaborative MR/AR, display hardware, performance issues (real-time approaches), embedded computing for MR/AR, integration of MR/AR technologies into wide-area pervasive computing environments
• MR/AR applications – across all areas of personal and professional activities, such as: Personal MR/AR information systems, games, applications in industry, military, medicine, science, entertainment, architecture, tourism, art, cultural heritage, education, training etc.

Topics of the Arts, Media & Humanities Tracks:

Compelling applications of Mixed & Augmented Reality. Applications include artistic expression, experiential-media or interpretive pieces that reflect the study of the human condition.
• Art – The Art program is looking for notable artists that have stretched the boundaries of expression with the use of Mixed and Augmented Reality.  The creative interaction between real, virtual and the imaginary realities to create provoking experiences are highly encouraged.  Written papers and posters are to include position statement with notes and images on approach, implementation and the technology used.  A gallery show will be mounted to support physical entries (see call for demonstrations).
• Media – submissions from media practitioners who have stretched the boundaries of the creative impact of Mixed and Augmented Reality.  This venue seeks innovative uses of creative techniques for communication and entertainment to enhance the experience of MR/AR through novel applications of head-mounted, embedded projection, or mobile displays.  Submissions may include new tools, conventions or taxonomies for developing these new media.
• Humanities – academic submissions that relate to Mixed and Augmented Reality content that allows for innovative analytical, critical or speculative approaches to reflect the study of the human condition. and digital media.

Call for Innovation Workshops

ISMAR 2009 will have a series of workshops the day before the conference (Monday) to cover the innovative application of Mixed and Augmented Reality to specific industry domains.  Three workshops have been defined.  We invite you to submit papers or panel discussions that will address topics of transferring MR/AR to solve critical real world problems (see web site for details).  If your paper or panel does not fit the existing workshop, you may submit a proposal for a new workshop.
• Designing the Future (Design and Manufacturing Workshop):  This workshop will continue the ISMAR legacy of showcasing the pioneering efforts of the auto and other industries’ use of Mixed and Augmented Reality as design tools.
• Falling in Love with Learning (Entertainment & Education Workshop):  Entertainment and Education converge in Mixed Reality Experiential Learning Landscapes for museums, libraries, schools and parks.
• Transforming Lives (Medical and Military Training Workshop):  Extreme Mixed Reality needs to meet high-risk, high-performance training to enhance human preparation for life and death scenarios.

Call for Pioneering Tutorials

To mark ten years of ISMAR, the 2009 conference will include a three-day comprehensive tutorial program that covers a wide spectrum of topics in Mixed and Augmented Reality.  We are looking for submissions from pioneers to share their experiences and insights.  Formats can be from 30 to 90 minutes.  These tutorials will be video captured and distributed as a series along with special features covering the work of pioneering laboratories worldwide.

Call for Demonstrations

There will be four formats to submit demonstrations.  Demonstrations can be related to papers, posters or panels, but that is not required.  A proposed abstract, floor plan and list of requirements are requested with the letter of intent (see websites for details).  Accepted Participants will receive notification by June 30th, 2009 to start coordination with the ISMAR 2009 Planning Committee.  To accommodate late breaking discoveries, we will accept “Laboratory Demonstrations” until the last minute, pending committee discretion and conference  accommodations (submissions received after August 15th, 2009 will not be included in the publications). Letters of intent are recommended for all submissions to assist in the planning.
• Laboratory Demonstrations will provide the opportunity for “late breaking” research teams to informally demonstrate their latest inventions and allow for interaction with attendees and other pioneers.
• Research Showcase will be a more formal presentation of innovative Mixed and Augmented Reality content that involve more production support and exhibit design considerations.
• Art Gallery will present innovative Mixed and Augmented Reality artwork within a unique gallery format based on a combination of invited and submitted work.
• Innovation Exhibitions (See industry/Sponsor relations) will feature the latest commercially available products and services for use in Mixed and Augmented Reality applications.  The exhibition will be available for rental to industry buyers from the entertainment, medical, military and educational markets.  A special “Start-up Park” will be available for small, first time commercial exhibitors at more affordable prices.  Early registration is recommended for the expected increased participation and limited space.

Tracking Competition

The first event of this kind at ISMAR 08 (http://ismar08.org/wiki/doku.php?id=program-competition) caught much attention. A sequel will be organized at ISMAR 2009. Details regarding the tracking task and the rules of competition will be made available on the web site. It is to be expected that only a limited number of teams can participate.

***********************

Don’t be wary.

Even if you do not have a rigorous research paper – you still have an important role in ISMAR 2009.

If you have developed a cool AR tool, app or game, or -

if you have conceptualized an interesting AR idea, or even-

if you just had a vision of the killer AR app  – we want to hear from you!

Don’t wait for the May 16th deadline – you can’t afford to. Submit your proposal today.

**********************

Send your proposals to:

Gudrun Klinker, Blair MacIntyre and Hideo Saito

Science and Technology Program Chairs (Science@ismar09.org)

Blair MacIntyre

Art and Humanities Program Co-Chair (Humanities@ismar09.org, Art@ismar09.org)

Jay Bolter

Humanities Program Chair (Humanities@ismar09.org)

Jarrell Pair

Media Program Chair (Media@ismar09.org)

Charlie Hughes

Tutorial Chair (tutorials@ismar09.org)

Christian Sandor

Laboratory Demonstration Chair (Demos@ismar09.org)

Sean White,

Research Showcase Chair (Showcase@ismar09.org)

Larry Davis

Innovation Exhibition Chair (Exhibits@ismar09.org)

Christopher Stapleton

Interim Workshop Chair (Workshops@ismar09.org)

Daniel Pustka

Tracking Contest Chair (Tracking@ismar09.org)

We want to hear from you!

As a member of ISMAR’s Media track committee – I hereby vow to emphatically review every single proposal in the media track. Your voice must be heard.

Blair MacIntyre sent me a nice proof of concept of an augmented reality virtual pet running on an iPhone.

So I thought, why not write about “the making of ARf”?

Shot a couple of questions to Blair and he conveniently turned it into a well structured interview. Thanks Blair!

Here it is for your edutainment.

games alfresco: Hey Blair, I’d like to write about ARf in my blog.

Blair: Great!

games alfresco: Is there anything beyond the video that I could share?

Blair: We (my student Kimberly Spreen, really) did this relatively quickly.  She figured out how to get video [on an iphone], and we’d been thinking about doing a virtual pet game for quite a while, so we decided to implement some of the ideas to test out the iPhone.

games alfresco: Could you share a description of the current features?

Blair: Right now, you can interact via the touch screen, and by moving the markers.  Kim did a nice little implementation of multi-marker tracking where you can just add new markers as you feel like and don’t need to preconfigure the multi-marker layout.  You can interact with the dog by touching it (touch its nose and it jumps up to lick, its tail and it chases it, rub its back and it rolls over to let you rub its tummy) or by touching the ground to send it somewhere.  If it gets near its water it drinks, near the other dog it plays, or near a smudge (that you put on the ground by rubbing the ground) it sniffs it (alas, the smudge looks like a little “pile”, which works, but wasn’t the intent).

games alfresco: Plans for a full game?

Blair: This is a project we’ve been thinking about for a few years, going back to our “Dart the Dog” project that we did in Director.  The goal is to explore what it means to let everyone have a virtual pet they can take with them, and interact with through different interfaces (desktop, handheld, handheld AR, etc).  Most importantly, we want the location (bedroom, living room, work, bus, bar, etc) and activity (sound level, light levels, etc) and presence of other pets to impact how the pet develops.

To handle the development, we are talking to some folks at an AI company, who are creating an engine for doing creature AI based on reinforcement learning.  They hope to have something we can use next year.  If we can get that, we will be able to really have pets that grown, change, evolve, etc.

A few company’s who are funding us are interested in this, so I hope we can devote some energy to it next year.  We’ll probably target a few platforms, but obviously the iPhone has a lot of appeal.  From a research perspective, I’m interested in it because there is the potential to release a research game and (with permission of the people who download it, of course), collect a lot of usage data.  Ironically, since the create AI engine is server based, I don’t know if we could handle a big success and provide the AI service to everyone who gets the game, but I’ll worry about that it we ever get there.

games alfresco: Can you share more details about the software? Is it a Jailbroken iPhone?

Blair: Official iPhone SDK, unhacked phones.  I have no interest in working with jailbroken phones;  the appeal of the iPhone is the potential for mass distribution to support broad evaluation and feedback.

Obviously, we have hacked the API to get at the camera, so we can’t release this until Apple creates an official API.

We are using StbTracker for tracking.  The rest of the software was written by us.

games alfresco: Cool. Thanks for showing us “under the hood” of ARf.

For a doggie game, the name ARf works nicely in English.

It could get weird when translated into:

• Spanish - jau, jau
• Afrikaans – blaf
• Albanian – ham, ham
• Arabic – how how
• Armenian – haf, haf
• Basque -  zaunk-zaunk
• Bulgarian -  jaff, jaff
• Catalan – bau, bau
• Chinese, Cantonese – wow, wow
• Chinese, Mandarin – wang, wang
• Croatian – vau, vau
• Danish – vov, vov
• Dutch – waf, waf;
• Esperanto – boj, boj
• French - ouaf, ouaf
• German – wuff, wuff;
• Greek – ghav, ghav
• Hebrew – hav, hav
• Hindi – bho, bho
• Icelandic – voff, voff
• Indonesian – guk, guk
• Irish – amh-amh
• Japanese – wan, wan
• Korean – mung mung
• Latvian – vau, vau
• Persian – vogh, vogh
• Portuguese - béu-béu
• Russian – gav, gav
• Serbian – av, av
• Slovenian – hov, hov
• Thai – hoang, hoang

Welcome to the late evening keynote of the second day of ISMAR ‘08 in Cambridge.

The keynote speaker is Diarmid Campbell, from Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (London), and heads its research on camera gaming. And we are covering it in real time.

Diarmid comes on stage. the crowed is going crazy…

The talk: Out of the lab and into the living room

What a camera game? Simply put, you see yourself in the camera and add graphics on top.

The trouble with the brain: it fixes things you see (example of a checkerboard, a black square in the light has the same color as a white square in the dark.)

Background subtraction is the first thing you try to do. Using this technique, Diarmid superimposes him self in real time on top of…the ‘70 super band ABBA…

User interface motion buttons – use virtual buttons that the user activates. The response is not as robust, but it’s more responsive.

Example of EyeToy Kinetic

Next is a demonstration of vector buttons and optical flow.

You have to keep the control on the side – otherwise the player’s body will activate it unintentionally.

It turns out Sony decided not to use this control…not just yet.

A similar control was actually published in Creature Adventures available online. Diarmid struggles with it. The crowed goes wild. Diarmid: “You get the idea…”

Good input device characteristics: Many degrees of freedom, non-abstract (player action=game action), robust and responsive.

Camera games have been accused in the past for not having depth (too repetitive). There are 2 game mechanics: skill based (shoot the bad guy) and puzzle based. This could become shallow – unless you deliver on the responsiveness and robustness.

To demonstrate color tracking, Diarmid dives into the next demo (to the pleasure of the audience…). For this demo he holds 2 cheerleader pompoms…

“It’s like a dance dance revolution game, so I also have to sing and occasionally shout out party…”

The crowd is on the floor.

See for yourself -

We are on to drawing games, Sketch Tech. He draws a cow that is supposed to land on a banana shaped moon. He succeeds!

Using a face detector from Japan, here is a Head Tracking game: a green ball hangs from his mouth (a pendulum) and with circular moves of his head he rotates it, while trying to balance it…

Eye of judgment, a game that came out last year (bought out by Sony) relied on a marker based augmented reality technology. It is similar to a memory game, with a camera and a computer, and cards.

We are starting to wrap up and Diarmid summarizes, credits Pierre for setting up all the hardware, and opens the floor for questions.

Question: How do you make the game interesting when you’re doing similar gestures over and over again…

Diarmid: When the game is robust and responsive – you’ll be surprised how long you can play the game and try to be better.

Blair MacIntyre (from the audience): Robust and learn-able is what makes the game fun over time.

Question: Is there anything more you can tell us about the depth camera? Will it be available soon to consumers?

Diarmid: No.

The crowed bursts into loughs.

Blair (jumps in from the audience) There is a company called 3dv in Israel which offers such a camera. It’s not cheap or as good as discussed before, but you can get it.

Q: What’s special about camera games beyond novelty?

Diarmid: The 2 novel aspects of camera games are that it allows you to see yourself, and you can avoid the controller. Camera games are also great for multi-players.

Q: Is there a dream game you’d like to see?

Diarmid: Wow, that’s hard…I worked on a game before Sony called The Thing based on Carpenter’s movie. It was all about trust. The camera suddenly opens up the ability to play with that. When people see each other, the person to person interaction is very interesting and hasn’t been explored in games.

Q: will we see camera games on PSP?

Diarmid: there is a game in development, and I don’t know if I can talk about it…

Q: when I look in the mirror I am not so comfortable with what I see…how do you handle that?

Diarmid:  We flip the image. It’s hard to handle a ball, when just looking at the mirror.

And that’s a wrap! Standing ovation.

~~~

After party shots…

Everyone is back from lunch and the afternoon session is on: User studies in augmented reality.

First on stage is Benjamin Avery to talk (with an animated Australian accent) about User Evaluation of See-Through Vision for Mobile Outdoor Augmented Reality. This

The study took users outdoors in various scenarios to test the performance of AR vision using see through displays. Then, they compared it with a second group that watched the video through a desktop computer

[link to paper, videos, images to come]

The result demonstrates complex trade-off between AR and desktop visualizations. AR system provided increased accuracy in locating specific points in the scene. AR visualization was quite simple, beating the desktop in tracking and in better visualization.

Stay tuned for the demo (which was hauled all the way from Australia to Cambridge)!

~~~

Next on stage is Cindy Robertson from Georgia Tech (Honorable mention in ISMAR 2007) and she discusses An Evaluation of Graphical Context in Registered AR, Non-Registered AR, and Heads-Up Displays.

How are users affected when there are many registration errors  or in other words when when tracking is not perfect? Can the user handle it better if a graphics context is provided?

They tested it with a set of tasks encompassing placing virtual Lego blocks with groups using Registered AR, Non-Registered AR, and Heads-Up Displays.

Following an exhaustive analysis of the resulted data they uncovered the following insights:

• Head movement and memorization increased performance
• Head movement affected perceived mental workload and frustration
• When you have graphics obstructing your view, and switching between it and real world is frustrating
• HUD-visible case was surprisingly faster than the other cases. But people hated it…

Final conclusion: Registered outperformed both the non-registered AR and graphics displayed on a HUD. Non-registered AR does not offer any significant improvement.

Future plans are to test home-like scenarios and impose more complex tasks.

~~~

On stage Mark Livingston is getting ready to talk about The Effect of Registration Error on Tracking Distant Augmented Objects.

A basic assumption is that registration errors limits performance of users in AR. “We wanted to measure the sources (such errors are noise, latency, position and orientation error) and see the affect on the user – and then be able to write requirements for future systems.”

For this study, they used the nVisorST.

The tasks were trying to measure the users ability to understand behaviors and situational awareness in the AR application: following a target (car) when buildings stand in between.

Conclusions are straight forward though somewhat surprising:

• Latency has significant effect on performance and response time – was the worse.
• Noise was disliked but did not have significant impact on performance
• Orientation error fifn’t have significant effect
• Weather had significant impact on results: darker weather delivered improved performances. Brightness was a major distraction.

===============

From the ISMAR Program

User Studies (from ISMAR ‘08 program)

• User Evaluation of See-Through Vision for Mobile Outdoor Augmented Reality
  Benjamin Avery, Bruce H. Thomas, Wayne Piekarski
• An Evaluation of Graphical Context in Registered AR, Non-Registered AR, and Heads-Up Displays
  Cindy Robertson, Blair MacIntyre, Bruce Walker
• The Effect of Registration Error on Tracking Distant Augmented Objects
  Mark A. Livingston, Zhuming Ai

“Enjoy the weather” uttered sarcastically a kindhearted British witch (aka air hostess) while we were leaving the aircraft; surprisingly – we did in the first day. We were then promised this is accidental and surely the last day of summer. Splendid.

Venice, Italy? nope, Cambridge, UK!

I have landed in Cambridge, UK (where people go to augment their reality) and all I ever heard about it – is true: British meadow green, majestic 600 year old buildings, cosmopolitan young folks, fish cakes…a combination that gives this university city its unique aura; a great setting for the event starting tomorrow – reality only better, at ISMAR ‘08.

St. Catherine College - can't ask for a nicer place to stay...

For those who couldn’t make it, stay tuned for a live coverage of ISMAR ‘08, the world’s best augmented reality event.

Featuring AR pioneers such as: Tom Drummond, Paul McIlroy, Mark Billinghurst, Blair MacIntyre, Daniel Wagner, Wayne Piekarski, Uli Bockholt (Fraunhofer IGD), Peter Meier, Mark A. Livingston, Diarmid Campbell, David Murray, Rolf R. Hainich, Oliver Bimber, Hideo Saito and many more –

– overing topics such as: Industrial augmented reality, hand-held augmented reality, displays, user studies, applications, layouts, demos, state-of-the-art AR, and don’t miss the highly anticipated tracking competition.

Welcome all speakers and attendees to the event, and don’t forget: look right first!

If you are at the event (or not) and want to chat, share thoughts, or ask questions – leave a comment here or send a message on facebook.

For those of you who missed Virtual Worlds last week in LA, and therefore found it hard to attend the Augmented Reality Panel – David Orban was there for you.

Here are all 59 minutes of the discussion he recorded and uploaded. Thanks David!

Roo, the panel host, brilliantly captured a blow by blow of the discussion and included slides that were used to illustrate the panel. Kudos to Roo!

From the event program:

Augmented Reality: Virtual Interfaces to Tangible Spaces
- Marc Goodman, Director, Alcatel-Lucent
- Eric Rice, Producer, Slackstreet Studios
- Blair MacIntyre, Associate Professor, School of Interactive Computing, Director, GVU Center Augmented Environments Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology
- David Orban, Founder & Chief Evangelist, WideTag, Inc.
- Andrew (Roo) Reynolds, Portfolio Executive for Social Media, BBC Vision (moderator)

Now repeat after me this tongue twister: I virtually participated in the Virtual Worlds panel about augmented reality and I really augmented my world.

Next, we are off to ISMAR ‘08 September 15-18th in Cambridge, UK!

As the light at the end of the (summer vacation) tunnel is almost insight, let me ask you a reflective question:

Where do kids prefer to be on a summer day:

(a) Museums

(b) Theme parks

(c) Staying at home and playing video games

Any volunteers for (a) ?…

What if you could combine all three into one?

What if you could transform learning about cultures, art, science, history – into a fun experience for kids? What if museums were as much fun as outdoor adventures and video games combined?

This fantasy is becoming a reality thanks to efforts by pioneers around the world.

Here are my picks of the 4 5 best augmented reality tours that are reinventing museums:

1. Lifeplus in Pompei

Pompei Ladies in an afternoon promenade in front of your eyes

Breathing new life into the ruined streets of Pompei

Visitors stroll in the real streets of Pompei, while watching thru their glasses, virtual scenes of city natives living their lives as if it’s 79 AD, minutes before the eruption of Vesuvius.

This EU funded project was lead by MIRALab – university of Geneva in 2004. See more at Lifeplus.

2. DNP-Louvre Museum lab

A behind the scenes look at exhibits

A mobile device with live video, shows on the display virtual objects such as a balloon that guides visitors through the exhibits. The climax of this tour arrives (1:37) when shards of an antique Islamic platter are virtually reconstructed to create the real platter.

Kudos to Metaio who developed the experience for DNP-Louvre Museum Lab in Tokyo, though they should try trimming the bulky device…

See more at DNP-Louvre Museum lab in Tokyo

3. Mobile Augmented Reality Quest (MARQ) –         Expedition Schatzsuche

Treasure hunt in a museum (in Austria)

A team oriented game where museum visitors play the role of investigators required to solve 3d virtual puzzles surrounding exhibits. Successful completion of puzzles reveal further steps of the story.

Beyond the new type of interaction with museum exhibits, MARQ introduces multi user collaboration: collected virtual items can be shared between groups, and “guided tour replays” can be viewed at any time – on the Gizmondo (RIP) gaming device.

This novice approach to experiencing Museum exhibits was developed by the Graz University team in Vienna, led by Daniel Wagner and Dieter Schmalstieg. It was shot at the Kärner Landesmuseum in Klagenfurt/Carinthia.

See more about MARQ at Studierstube

And here is an older project from the same team: Enigma Rally at the Vienna Technical Museum.

4. Rome Reborn, now Augmented

Undo the barbarians

Rome Reborn is the largest computer simulation of an ancient city. Cool. But what Fraunhofer (Institute for Computer Graphics Research) has done with it is way cool: walk among the ruins of the Roman Forum and point your Vaio UMPC anywhere to see buildings being reconstructed.

See more about the technology used at InstantReality

5. Voices of Oakland

If a cemetery were a museum

Blair MacIntyre and his team at GA Tech have done the impossible: they have turned the Oakland cemetery in Atlanta to a visitor magnet – all thanks to an augmented reality tour which can be experienced on a cell phone. You have to see it to believe it.

Unfortunately, the cemetery was destroyed last year by a hurricane. So the students of subsequent years wont be able to keep playing with it.

6. Science Museum in Paris

Navigate Museums with AirTags

A new implementation by Tonchidot for La Villette Museum in Paris where visitors use AirTags provided by the Museum or by users to enrich their museum experience.
In the creators own words:

Sekai camera turns a museum into a “living” internet environment…The real world becomes “clickable”

7. Digital Binocular Station for Cultural Museums

A stationary Augmented Reality device developed by Mind Space Solutions. Because it is fixed to a single location, it allows the use photorealistic, cinema-quality visuals, and compensate for the lack of parallax by presenting everything in stereoscopic 3D.

=========================================

What are the 10 ingredients to augment a museum tour?

1. A practical augmented reality device (avoid backpacks and bulky displays) with visual tracking software
2. High quality 3D models of exhibits, and how they looked and behaved in the past (and future?)
3. A combination of learning and fun with a really really good story
4. Breath life into inanimate objects
5. Sprinkle some sound when necessary
6. Incinerate verbose plaques; say what you have to say in 2 to 5
7. Indoor tours are great; outdoor tours are even better
8. Multi user interaction and collaboration
9. Location based services, including (fun) navigation instructions
10. Did I mention it has to be fun?

Didn’t make the list…

The following efforts didn’t make the list, mostly because they forgot ingredient #10…

• Academic article: “Building Virtual and Augmented Reality museum exhibitions”
• International CIPA Symposium: Merging augmented reality based features in mobile multimedia museum guides
• Museum Navigation System using Augmented Reality Technologies
• Augmented reality show at the museum by ARMUSEMENT
• Meta-Museum: A Supportive Augmented-Reality Environment for Knowledge Sharing (1997)

Have you seen other augmented museum tours? Share your experiences!