I mean, yeah, we have some basic augmented reality apps and I already spoke about them in one of my previous posts. However they all suffer from obvious problem - the mobile GPS location is accurate ONLY down to about 8-12 meters or even more. The consequence of this is that the augmented reality data floats all over your screen and it's not accurate enough.
I want to look at my phone and have a nice icons, descriptions, clips and images overlying on the surrounding reality in the right places without the irritating floating effect. I want to be able to pick an object in city space and label it in a way that will effectively display for other users. I want it to be like in a science-fiction movies.
But how to achieve that?
One company thought about interesting way to solve the floating and accuracy problem. Earthmine has adapted a 3-D space mapping technology used in Mars rovers to capture the city street and create a detailed, 3D representation of space. At first it sounds just like a sophisticated Google Street View. However, Earthmine vision is to merge 3D maps they capture with location capacities of mobile phones and create a fully interactive, and stable geolocation engine. So inaccurate GPS signal from the phone will be combined with the recognition of the surroundings you are standing in, which will allow you to get a precise augmented reality display.I just hope that Google have a plan like this, and can use that in their Street View to apply such technology, because it would really be... the quickest solution, considering how much of the world they have already mapped....
[photo credit: Earthmine]
Google is very active in this area with the recently announced Google Goggles (among other services.)
ReplyDeleteI predict that basic AR will be available on all smartphones within five years from now. Many of the current generation smartphones already have (A)GPS, compass and a video camera. That should be enough to properly overlay information on the live camera image.
I think the problem is more in creating the infrastructure and integrating it with data feeds from multiple providers (apartments to rent, available jobs, potential sexual partners, etc.)
Indeed, Google Goggles is an interesting option. Waiting for iPhone version, it's currently only on Android.
ReplyDeleteThe integration of AR with different providers is not such a big issue, Layar is already quite active in this. The problem from my perspective is still interface with hardware that is not good enough to handle AR. Its just much more convenient to Google Map a restaurant than to look for it via current clunky AR interfaces.
I suppose that depends on what you consider AR -- I think turn-by-turn navigation (with landmarks, cafes etc.) is an example of AR technology we already use. I think Layar gets publicity because it seems to give the user a more "real" AR experience, but I don't see anything more than a gimmicky Google Maps.
ReplyDeleteI think Goggles is far more impressive as an idea, because maps and navigation aren't as useful to me as, for example, recognizing items (how much does this book cost online?) and people (which is technically possible, but Google is afraid of privacy implications.)