Augmented Reality
Scientist creates a drivable version of classic OutRun video game
Some people who spent their youth in the 80s miss that era, and wish that things now were like they were then. Well, those people might be interested in the University of California at Irvine’s OutRun Project. With the ultimate aim of developing gaming therapy systems for people such as quadriplegics, scientists involved in the project have created a kind of combination electric golf cart and arcade-style video game console. Players can actually drive the cart down the road, while an augmented reality feature displays the real-life road on the screen in front of them, but in the form of Sega’s classic 8-bit road racing game, OutRun. Read More
Facial recognition software, social networking and cloud computing ... they're all technological advances that alone have thrown up questions regarding privacy. According to a recent Carnegie Mellon University study, however, the three technologies can be combined to learn peoples' identities and other personal information about them, starting with just a photograph of their face. Read More
As a child sitting in the back of the family car, did you ever use your finger to doodle in the condensation on the inside of the windows? Well, a group of engineers and designers from Toyota Motor Europe’s Kansei1 Design Division and the consultancy arm of the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design (CIID) have taken car-window-doodling into the 21st Century. They’ve created a prototype system that could turn the side windows of Toyotas into touchscreen augmented reality devices, allowing passengers to interface with the passing scenery. Read More
It can be very frustrating trying to fix something, when the person instructing you isn’t there in person, but is instead communicating with you over a phone line – “Whaddaya mean, ‘The silver cap’? Which silver cap?!” This is why engineers sometimes need to be flown in to factories or other places that use complex machines, to make repairs that simply can’t be explained verbally. Researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Communication, Information Processing and Ergonomics, however, have developed an augmented reality system that lets those engineers provide real-time visual instructions to distant on-site technicians ... and it can be done without internet access. Read More
Last month we reported on the Aurasma augmented reality (AR) app, and compared it to the special sunglasses in the John Carpenter movie They Live, that let their wearers see the aliens secretly living amongst us. Well, the new appBlaster iPhone accessory is much, much more reminiscent of that film. It's essentially a toy gun, that your iPhone mounts on top of. Running the free Alien Attack AR game, the phone will proceed to show you the virtual otherwise-invisible aliens that are all around you, overlaid on real-time video of your your real-life surroundings. You then use the gun to shoot the little goobers before they nab you. Read More
Since Parrot’s AR.Drone was released last year, iPad, iPhone and iPod touch users have been able to control the twin-camera packing RC quadricopter via their iOS devices. At launch time Parrot said support for non-Apple platforms was on the way and following the release of piloting apps for mobile phones running Samsung’s bada and Nokia’s Symbian operating systems, Parrot has announced Android users will be able to find a free piloting app in the Android Market from next month. Read More
Fans of the movie They Live will recall the special sunglasses in the film, that allowed the unknowing public to see that certain people were actually aliens, and that seemingly ordinary billboards in fact displayed messages like “OBEY” and “CONSUME.” The new Aurasma app for iPhone 4 and iPad 2 is kind of like those glasses. OK, it doesn’t actually reveal the true nature of things, but it does allow you to see otherwise unseeable videos and other images that fellow Aurasma users have virtually attached to real-world scenes and objects. If you were to point your phone’s camera at a certain building, for instance, you would see real-time video of that building on your screen, but perhaps with another user’s computer-generated monster climbing up the side of it to promote an upcoming event. Read More
Best known for discovering security flaws in online systems, Dan Kaminsky has recently announced the development and release of a smartphone app to help with color blindness. DanKam takes the colors that cause viewing problems and applies filters to make them visible. The system is currently optimized for the most common form of color vision deficiency, although users are encouraged to customize and tweak the augmented reality app to try and find settings that work best for them. Read More
Word Lens app turns your phone into a real-time translator
Word Lens translates printed words in real time on your iPhone. Can our jet packs be far behind? Developed by Quest Visual, Word Lens is an augmented-reality translation app that uses your phone's camera to view printed words and translate them into another language as you watch. If you’re traveling for business or on vacation and need to read a street sign or a menu, point your phone and Word Lens instantly translates it, maintaining the color and font as it goes. Read More
Research company Juniper has drawn up a list of predictions for the mobile and wireless industry for 2011 and they portray humanity hurtling headlong towards a mobile-centric lifestyle. Juniper sees 2011 as a year where we'll see increasing use of Augmented Reality, the first Cloud-Based Operating Systems, Mobile Banking becomes a must, the beginning of the demise of the credit card, the rise of Mobile Lottery Tickets, biometrics coming to mobile and Social Purchasing moving to a whole new level. A must read! Read More
