Selltic Renault Utilitaire

Selltic Renault Vehicule Utilitaire from diotasoft on Vimeo.

Selltic Augmented Reality Renault Clio 4

Selltic Augmented Reality Renault Clio 4 from diotasoft on Vimeo.



Selltic is a set of technological solutions intended to support sales. Our augmented reality based systems are aimed to enable vendors to emphasize, comprehensively, the full potential of the product, directly in the real context.

For more information visit selltic.eu

BlippAR

If you still don't know waht AR could be good for. BlippAR presents some nice ideas.

MUSTARD - Managing occlusions between real and virtual objects

Interesting paper on augment reality display that can handle occlusions between real and virtual objects presented at CHI 2012.

MUSTARD: Multi User See Through Augmented Reality Display

"We present MUSTARD, a multi-user dynamic random hole see-through display, capable of delivering viewer dependent information for objects behind a glass cabinet. Multiple viewers are allowed to observe both the physical object(s) being augmented and their location dependent annotations at the same time. The system consists of two liquid-crystal (LC) panels within which physical objects can be placed. The back LC panel serves as a dynamic mask while the front panel serves as the data. We first describe the principle of MUSTARD and then examine various functions that can be used to minimize crosstalk between multiple viewer positions. We compare different conflict management strategies using PSNR and the quality mean opinion score of HDR-VDP2. Finally, through a user- study we show that users can clearly identify images and objects even when the images are shown with strong conflicting regions; demonstrating that our system works even in the most extreme of circumstances."

Sony UK presents its markerless tracking technology Magnat for PS Vita at GDC 2012

At GDC 2012 Sony UK has presented its new markerless tracking technology for PS Vita called Magnat. The technique allows to track basically any textured 3D environment.

The algorithm is able to initialize itself without any need of markers or pre-learning phase. It is also able to detect planar surfaces in the cloud of reconstructed 3D points. This allows the user to add 3D objects interactively.

Since those planar surfaces can easily be triangulated and the corresponding real video texture is known, they are able to deform these surfaces and render them for example liquid. See the second video for this nice effect.

While I have no further information about the actual algorithm that is used by Magnat, my first guess would be a variation of the popular Parallel Tracking and Mapping approach presented by Klein in 2007.

more videos after the break

Qualcomm presenting mobile 3D tracking at MWC 2012

"Sesame Street Augmented Reality Dolls Take AR to the Next Level"

Metaio Markerless 3D Tracking using Gravity Aware Algorithms

Metaio has announced to release in mid mars 2012 its new Juneio SDK, which will include a feature to track 3D objects and sceneries without markers. Metaio could win last tracking contest at ISMAR 2012 using this technology. The first video shows some insights of the gravity aware algorithms that were implemented to allow stable mobile markerless 3D tracking.

Markerless 3D Tracking Technology Video

History of Mobile Augmented Reality

Very nice compilation of the history of mobile augmented reality. From the first head-up-display in 1968 by Sutherland until mobile SLAM by Klein. This list was created by the members of the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Handheld Augmented Reality.

Mobile Augmented Reality History

Dense Tracking and Mapping in Real-Time

Great ICCV paper by Richard Newcomb about tracking and mapping techniques with a single camera that even calculates a deth map in real time.

"DTAM is a system for real-time camera tracking and reconstruction which relies not on feature extraction but dense, every pixel methods. As a single hand-held RGB camera flies over a static scene, we estimate detailed textured depth maps at selected keyframes to produce a surface patchwork with millions of vertices. We use the hundreds of images available in a video stream to improve the quality of a simple photometric data term, and minimise a global spatially regularised energy functional in a novel non-convex optimisation framework. Interleaved, we track the camera 6DOF motion precisely by frame-rate whole image alignment against the entire dense model."

A Day made of Glass

Its an advertisement, but at the same time a real interessant look in the future of augmented reality.

Metaio working on windshield projection

Metaio just released a video of one of their current projects in cooperation with Audi, Continental and other partners. The idea is to create a system that is able to analyse and understand the environment around a car and provide the with useful information a projection onto the windshield.

Eleven partners from the German automotive industry join forces to explore innovative technologies and concepts for boosting energy efficiency in vehicles. Firstly, cars are to become "intelligent" and, for example, use knowledge of the planned route to develop proactive operating strategies designed to save energy and, based on this, initiate appropriate responses in good time on the part of the car or driver. Secondly, the vehicle power supply and associated components are to be specifically tailored to the possibilities of these intelligent operating strategies. The project is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Research and Technology (BMBF) and supervised by the VDI TZ.

ISMAR 2011 Paper Highlights

My favorite papers presented at ISMAR 2011.


Robust Planar Target Tracking and Pose Estimation from a Single Concavity
Michael Donoser, Peter Kontschieder, Horst Bischof
Graz University of Technology

"The basic idea is to adapt the classic tracking-by-detection approach, which seeks for the object to be tracked independently in each frame, for tracking non-textured objects. In order to robustly estimate the 3D pose of such objects in each frame, we have to tackle three demanding problems. First, we need to find a stable representation of the object which is discriminable against the background and highly repetitive. Second, we have to robustly relocate this representation in every frame, also during considerable viewpoint changes. Finally, we have to estimate the pose from a single,closed object contour"

Javascript based Natural Feature Tracking enables markerless AR in the browser

Coming back from ISMAR 2011 in Basel, I could see a very interesting project by developed by Christoph Oberhofer, Jens Grubert, Gerhard Reitmayr (ICG Graz University of Technology - Austria). It proofs that a reliable and performant natural feature based tracking can actually be implemented in Javascript, HTML5 and WebGL.

There are still a lot of issues especially with the access to live video, but results are already impressive. One has to imagine that this runs entirely on a single website.

The demo runs also on an Android phone with Firefox Beta. Of course not as fluide as on a PC, but still with reasonable interactive framerates. Chrome and Opera alpha were used for the desktop demo. Interestingly it was not running on Firefox on PC.

This work is a very good example of the pace of innovation regarding cutting edge augmented reality applications. There is no need for additional plugins, like FLARToolkit. See my post on that. It runs directly in your browser. It is clearly another possibility to bring augmented reality closer to the a broader public.

We can only imagine what will be possible, when the browser support of HTML5, WebGL and Javascript will be significantly improved and technologies like WebCL will come in play.

Great work

Upcoming ISMAR 2011 - Demos

Hi there,

next week (26.10.-29.10.) the ISMAR conference will take place in Basel (Switzerland). The premier international conference on research, technology and application in Mixed and Augmented Reality. It's becoming THE reference for research on (mobile) augmented reality.

After a first look on the program I hope to see a lot of great AR technology, listen to amazing paper presentations and meet interesting people.

Here is a small preview of tech demos I think will be interesting and hopefully will show new and innovative directions for future AR applications.

Volkswagen Golf Cabriolet Augmented Reality App

Volkswagen Golf Cabriolet with an augmented reality app. Available for for the iPad2, iPhone and Android. MAde by Paris based Agency.V. using Total Immersion technology.

Total Immersion released D'Fusion Studio Augmented Reality platform

Total Immersion released there new D'Fusion Studio Augmented Reality platform. It allows developers can create games and applications for a variety of platforms including iOS and Android™, Web, Microsoft® Kinect™ and kiosk

In parallel, they published the AR game SkinVaders for iOS platforms. Which uses facetracking to integrate nasty dots and whatshowever into your face.

SkinVaders play is right on your face – literally! Attack the aliens before they attack you!

HoloDesk - Direct 3D Interactions with a Situated See-Through Display

Just stumbled upon this HoloDeck project developed by Microsoft Research Cambridge. Using a Kinect a projection based AR setup with a half transparent mirror, the user can interact with virtual objects in real time. Looks nice, especially with the physics effects.

HoloDesk is a novel interactive system combining an optical
see through display and Kinect camera to create the illusion
that users are directly interacting with 3D graphics. A virtual
image of a 3D scene is rendered through a half silvered mir-
ror and spatially aligned with the real-world for the viewer.
Users easily reach into an interaction volume displaying the
virtual image. This allows the user to literally get their hands
into the virtual display. A novel real-time algorithm for rep-
resenting hands and other physical objects, which are sensed
by the Kinect inside this volume, allows physically realistic
interaction between real and virtual 3D objects.

Interesting paper presented at ISMAR 2010 "Interactive Modelling for AR Applications"

"The paper Real-time Modelling for AR Applications won second prize in the best paper awards at the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 2010 in Seoul, Korea.

The paper describes a method for generating 3D models of objects which requires minimal user interaction.  The motivation was the desire to allow users to create special effects to video as it is captures.  The interface is thus suitable for implementation on a video camera or phone.

The paper is available here."

Apple adding augmented reality to iOS (IPhone & IPad) maps

A recent patent submission by Apple describes a technique to improve iOS (IPhone & iPad) maps using augmented reality. It proposes to integrate additional information by overlaying a camera video stream with supplemental information about the surrounding environment.

This approach seems to be very close to techniques used already by Layar or Wikitude. I'm really curious how Apple will implement this approach in a final product. Yet it remains unclear where in which way this technique is innovative!

"According to Apple's patent application, street names, addresses and landmarks can all be added to a scene simply by pointing the camera at an area in the vicinity."

Patents Show Major Changes Coming to Apple iOS Maps | The iPhone FAQ

The CARE project

"The CARE project proposes to apply Augmented Reality techniques to the cultural domain. 

CARE is a French research project funded by the French research agency (ANR). The project brings together 7 partners, whose goal is to integrate, adapt and develop tools to enhance interactive systems devoted to cultural experiences. These enhancements are based on Augmented Reality and Emotions. 

Besides the enhancement of the two specific scenarios considered in the project (Ballet of Biarritz and Museum of Toulouse), CARE results will include improved conception methods as well as new generic interaction techniques based on augmented reality technologies."