Augmented Reality Navigation System

Mobilizy GmbH reveals a preview of it’s augmented reality navigation system, the first fully functional mobile AR navigation system available for the Android platform. Wikitude Drive was developed by the Mobilizy Research & Development group in Salzburg, Austria, to satisfy the curiosity of the developers to see if it was feasible to combine real-time navigation with mobile augmented reality. The result of this quest is Wikitude Drive, a fully-functional, light weight navigational system which overlays point-to-point directions on a camera-view, without the need for maps.

Wikitude Drive boasts the following features:

• * Mobile AR navigation, similar to a heads up display (HUD);
• * Fully functional, map-less navigation;
• * POI 2 POI navigation;
• * Integrated voice commands (additional text-to-speech engine required);
• * World wide navigational data which is accessed in real-time from the internet;
  o (a mobile internet connection is necessary to access data while in motion)
• * Peer-to-peer navigational functions
  o Social navigational features will be implemented in future releases
• * Interfaces with existing navigational APIs (for example: NavTeq, Map24, TeleAtlas)
• * Launching for Android and iPhone soon.

First iPhone Augmented Reality App Appears Live in App Store

French app development shop PresseLite appears to have the first Augmented Reality (AR) supporting iPhone app live in the iTunes store, though we don’t know how they did it. It’s called Metro Paris Subway, and while the app isn’t new, it released a new version last week that added an AR overlay that displays information about Paris businesses when you look at the city through your iPhone’s camera.

Augmented Reality is the term for a long-developed set of technologies that place layers of information on top of a view of the real world. Developers and AR-watchers have believed that no AR apps would be able to go live in the iTunes App Store until the next version of the iPhone OS is released in Fall. No one we’ve talked to has seen any others, but this one is for sale for 99 cents. It’s possible that it was allowed in by mistake, or that it’s a partial implementation of AR, but we’re waiting to hear back from the developers for more details.

We discovered a video of the app via Swedish blogger Magnus Aldemark. Augmented Reality is being tracked far more closely outside of the United States than within it, especially in Europe, Korea and Japan.

The AR capabilities only work on the new iPhone 3Gs; both GPS and a compass are used to determine location and direction being pointed at.

AR for the iPhone is eagerly awaited by iPhone users around the world.

Augmented Reality is taking off

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

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

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

Layar and brightkite

Augmented reality coming soon on the iPhone:

Brightkite Augmented Reality from Brightkite on Vimeo.

More augmented reality

Here’s more info on augmented reality, including a program which collects environmental data from many sources (including networked furniture?!?) and presents it to you.

Augmented Reality

We have talked about augmented reality in the past. It is the fact of adding layers of information into a real image. The most immediate application would be with new phones. Using the camera, gps, compass and Internet to add a layer to what you see with information or actionable interactions.

Here you have some examples:

Augmented Reality: Layar browser

Layar is a sort of browser derived from location based services and works on mobile phones that include a camera, GPS and a compass. Layar is first avaliable for handsets with the Android. It works as follows: Starting up the Layar application automatically activates the camera. The embedded GPS automatically knows the location of the phone and the compass determines in which direction the phone is facing. Each partner provides a set of location coordinates with relevant information which forms a digital layer. By tapping the side of the screen the user easily switches between layers. This makes Layar a new type of browser which combines digital and reality, which offers an augmented view of the world.

In other words you take your phone, the GPS and compass locate you, but instead of opening the map app, you open the camera, and you focus whatever you want… like a building. There will be a layer on top of the camera with all the info: if you have in your view a restaurant, maybe the menu, if it is a window, maybe is a house for rent so you have the price and the number of bedrooms. Cool, isn’t it?
Take a look at the video: