Hasta La Gadget!

A Japanese research group recently created a prototype for a “gaming system” utilizing a camera synced with a portable projector. The gizmo projects an adorable little cartoon character (it is Japanese after all) who reacts with the 2D world he is projected on to. For example, if you jerk the projection up, he acts like he’s flying. But also he will “walk” along a bold horizontal line or climb down a zig-zag.

As you may have already concluded, at this point in its development, this game is pretty lame (from a gaming point of view).

However, it shows one of the branches in the developing field of Augmented Reality. Many people are developing AR in terms of personal electronic devices–iPhones, iPads, things with “i” in front of them–in the form of Google Goggles, QR codes, etc. This is the on-screen category (also including the inevitable rise of glasses).

But there’s also people developing AR with projected content.

In the battle of projected vs. on-screen augmented realities, on-screen wins hands-down. Projected AR has zero practicality for individuals (mostly due to the ever-present problem of lookey-loos). For everyday use, a hand-held device are the way to go. Projected AR might be useful in group settings like presentations, marketing to pedestrians, or tour groups. But aside from that, do you really want strangers to be all up in your to-do list and Google searches? 

While the concept of projected AR has a certain kitschy value, it’s going to be of limited appeal when you can have the same experience on your private hand-held device, or down-the-line with AR-enabled glasses or contact lenses.

Danish designer Mads Hindhed has created glasses that instantly take spoken speech, converts it into readable text, and project them onto the inside of glasses.

The tech is called “BabelFisk,” which is Danish for “Babel Fish”–not to be confused with Yahoo!’s Babel Fish translation site (hey there, impending Yahoo! law suit). This tech is designed to bring the hearing impaired into
any conversation. And that’s going to help a lot of people.

On a sidenote, BabelFisk offers a hint of what we should expect from augmented reality. For convenience alone, a pair of projection-ready glasses really makes far more sense than holding up a cell phone to gain additional information from the world around you. That’s clunky, offers no privacy from lookie-loos around you, and busies at least one of your hands which you could otherwise be using for all sorts of neat stuff.

Projection-ready glasses that combine the true world with added information will be the future. Think the way the Terminator saw the world. It makes me want to hunt down Edward Furlong just thinkin’ about it!  Expect something along those lines when we live blog Apple’s media event in 2014-ish.

via Yanko

How long have dumblamps been ruling our desktops for? Their reign of evenly scattered light might finally be coming to a close. A few months back it was MIT student Natan Linder putting a pico projector in a lamp to create LuminAR. Now, researcher Li-Wei Chan from National Taiwan University has crafted something similar, again with a pico projector replacing a bulb, this time relying on an IR camera to detect position. The lamp projects an image into a surface that users can interact with, while tablets (also augmented with use IR cameras) can be used to display a 3D view of the 2D projected content, allowing a user to look around and zoom in dynamically. The voice-over in the video below talks of potential military applications, generals analyzing battlefields, but for once we’d like to think that this sort of thing would be used for peace. You know, planning nature walks, watching virtual horsies romp around in a pretend field, that sort of thing.

Continue reading Another augmented reality, pico-projecting lamp threatens desktops, brings tablet reinforcements (video)

Another augmented reality, pico-projecting lamp threatens desktops, brings tablet reinforcements (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Aug 2010 12:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s just a tablecloth and a piece of paper, until you pull out a Nexus One, at which point it magically becomes an arena where toy robots fire off punches. Augmented reality isn’t anything new, of course, but Qualcomm seems determined to bring it to cell phones in a big way — launching an AR game studio, sponsoring a $200,000 developer challenge, and announcing a free software development kit (which will see open beta this fall) all on the same day. The company partnered with Mattel to build the Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots proof-of-concept you see above using that very SDK, and you’ll find a hilarious video of grown men pretending to have the time of their lives with it right after the break.

However, augmented reality is only half of Qualcomm’s mobile gaming plan — a rep told Pocket-lint games like Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots are only financially viable if they can work across platforms. To that end, the company also demonstrated a simple three-player peer-to-peer title, but with — get this — a Nexus One (over Bluetooth), a Nokia N900 (over WiFi) and a Dell Latitude laptop all playing the same synchronous game. To commemorate this mishmash of awesome, the company funded another video; listen to an individual with a ludicrously bad accent give you the play-by-play after the break. Oh, and find some press releases, too.

Continue reading Qualcomm demos augmented reality and peer-to-peer tech, tries to punch cellular gaming’s block off (video)

Qualcomm demos augmented reality and peer-to-peer tech, tries to punch cellular gaming’s block off (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 06 Jul 2010 02:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Parrot AR.Drone to get official launch, price, street date at E3 2010 (update: Android client video!)

Parrot AR.Drone to get official launch, price, street date at E3 2010 (update: Android client video!) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 May 2010 12:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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