Nomination for Auggie Award: Best AR Video Creator: Soryn Voicu Organization: Soryn Voicu =*=*=*= Description: Depicting the future of education with Augmented Reality glasses Where to find it: Watch it here! Platforms: Glasses Additional Screenshots:...
Nomination for Auggie Award: Best AR Video Creator: Michaël Harboun Organization: Michaël Harboun =*=*=*= Description: In a world in which we are constantly bombarded with injunctions to react or to distract ourselves it gets scarcely possible in our everyday life to dwell upon the essential, the existential, the metaphysical… Transcendenz offers to connect our everyday life to an invisible reality, the one of ideas, concepts and philosophical questionings which the world is full of but that our eyes cant’ see. By bringing together the concepts of augmented/altered reality, Brain Computer Interface (BCI) and social networks, Transcendenz offers to live immersive philosophical experiences. Through meditation, users access the world of Interconsciousness, a white and silent universe in which they can connect themselves to the metaphysical experiences. These experiences transform our perception of the world and reveal an invisible philosophy. By making us aware of things like they are and not like they seem, the concept invites us to transcend our world. Transcendenz also enables us to access the knowledge of history’s great philosophers, who, since antiquity, try to answer the question: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” Core77 Awards 2011 – Speculative Objects/Concepts Observeur du Design 2012 Design in Life Label 2011 Where to find it: View it here! Platforms: Glasses Additional Screenshots:...
Nomination for Auggie Award: Best AR Video Creator: Bruce Branit Organization: Bruce Branit =*=*=*= Description: A strange man uses holographic tools to build a world for the woman he loves. This is a short by filmmaker Bruce Branit known also as the co-creator of 405. Where to find it: Watch it here! Platforms: Projection, Glasses, Gesture Device Additional Screenshots:...
threshold of where music meets media. SPOT Music is an independent music supervision and technology consulting firm with more than 80 film credits, including “Sling Blade”, “American Psycho”, “Super Troopers”, “Drumline” and “Notorious”. Cole produced and was nominated for a Grammy for Best Soundtrack Album and is a 2013 Grammy Nominee in Category 59 “Best Compilation for Visual Media”. Cole can also be found at the working to build a bridge between music and technology to empower artists and content managers in the digital space. He is a member of the Advisory Board for MonkeyBars.net, a digital content platform allowing Musicians, Filmmakers and Authors to upload and price their own content. Cole develops content and community for Dubspot.com (the leader in Electronic Music Education) and was recently featured on the Forbes.com blog discussing his new digital publishing company, Dub Fiction. Dub Fiction is a Trans-Media company that creates “Enhanced Graphic Novels” (EGNs) which mix Graphics, Video, Music and Augmented Reality to give readers a new experience on and off the page....
Greg Howes is the CEO of IDEAbuilder (Interactive Design, Engineering and Architecture), a building company in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (AEC) industry. With more than 15 years of experience as the owner of a residential building company and an additional 10 years of experience at information technology companies, including his own funded startup, Greg has extensive experience in both industries and is able to provide a cross-domain perspective on technology integration and innovative building systems for design, fabrication/manufacturing, and construction. IDEAbuilder uses and develops mixed reality solutions to make the design-build process more efficient. Application development is done in collaboration with a network of partners in North America and Europe supporting the standards most widely used in the design and fabrication industries as well as the rapidly evolving immersive web. In addition to enabling efficient construction, these technologies have proven to be beneficial for real-time collaborative design as well as the digital simulation of individual buildings and entire communities and are also being used for web-based interactive training, education, and marketing applications....
Nomination for Auggie Award: Best AR Campaign Creator: Adam Vahed Organization: Apache Solutions Ltd =*=*=*= Description: Project: ‘Become Iron Man’ experience. Client: Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures We were engaged by Marvel / Disney to create a cutting-edge AR / VR interactive experience to promote the release of the Iron Man 3 film, which premiered in April 2013. The experience utilised a Microsoft Kinect, integrated with an HD camera, a 103” plasma screen and a high-powered PC. It enabled users to ‘suit-up’ as Iron Man in AR mode by calling parts of Iron Man’s armour through pre-defined gestures. Users were then able to control the Iron Man avatar in VR mode, performing actions such as shooting the repulsor weapons at targets and flying around Tony Stark’s lab. In order to optimise the Kinect’s tracking abilities we developed our own control algorithms which enable the Iron Man avatar to match the user’s movements in a more realistic manner as well as creating bespoke code for calling the suit in AR mode. Our objective was to create and new experience that would live up to the ‘coolness’ of the Iron Man / Marvel brand. We believe that we achieved this by maintaining a relentless attention to detail when modelling the suit and the lab environment, employing custom techniques to provide a film-like experience. The experience was rolled out globally, running at six locations across the UK and Ireland (Newcastle, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, London and Dundrum) and at various locations in France, Greece, Turkey, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines and China. This is the first time that a major film brand has embraced AR to this degree and rolled it out on such a large scale. The public’s reaction has been overwhelmingly positive, and in some cases people have queued up for over two hours to participate in the experience, and still walked away smiling! We have also received countless requests as seen on YouTube for the experience to be released as a console game. Based on the success of the UK events, Vue Cinemas (an exhibitor in the UK) are now rolling out the experience at three additional locations in the UK in their larger cinema foyers. The experience will now continue to run throughout May. Disney Stores in the locations running the experiences reported a significant uplift in sales (over 100%) on the days that the experience was running and was directly attributed to it as consumers were driven to the stores after every experience to receive a specially made poster. The net effect on box office figures is obviously less tangible – nevertheless we have a good feeling that the AR experience has helped drive sales (which at the time of writing have passed $950 million globally). But the most significant indicator of the project’s success came when we were informed that Disneyland California wanted to run the experience as an attraction in their Iron Man Tech exhibit at Innoventions. This is definitely a first for an AR experience, and is testament to the success of the campaign as a whole. Reference Material: Videos: Tech blogs: • http://www.gizmodo.co.uk/2013/03/hands-on-with-the-iron-man-virtual-reality-setup-this-is-as-badass-as-kinect-gets • http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/katerina-zherebtsova/become-iron-man-_b_2997122.html • http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/one-of-our-reporters-is-iron-man/ Disneyland articles: • http://m.uk.ign.com/articles/2013/04/13/disneyland-introduces-their-first-marvel-exhibit-with-iron-man-tech • http://www.nerdist.com/2013/04/become-iron-man-at-disneylands-iron-man-tech-exhibit/ Twitter (#becomeironman): • https://twitter.com/search?q=becomeironman Box office figures: • http://edition.cnn.com/2013/05/13/showbiz/movies/great-gatsby-box-office-ew/index.html?hpt=en_c2 Where to find it: The experience was rolled out globally, running at six locations across the UK and Ireland (Newcastle, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield, London and Dundrum) and at various locations in France, Greece, Turkey, Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Philippines and China. Platforms: Magic Mirror, Stationary Device, Gesture Device Additional Screenshots:...
Nomination for Auggie Award: Best AR Hardware Creator: Rob Wang, Chris Twigg, Kenrick Kin Organization: 3Gear Systems =*=*=*= Description: We’re three guys who believe that the future of human computer interaction isn’t a better mouse or a bigger touchscreen. We’re developing software and hardware that lets you use all ten of your fingers and both of your hands to interact with a computer like you interact with the real world. Our first product is a lamp that understands your gestures. Set it up on your desk like you would any other lamp, and it turns the space beneath it interactive. Grab virtual objects in 3D, spin them around, or pull the trigger in your favorite first person shooter. Our interactions are more ergonomic and more efficient than other gestural interfaces. Start interacting by lifting up your hand just a couple centimeters, with your arms still comfortably resting on the desk. Select objects or issue commands simply by pinching or grabbing. Use our device all day, with millimeter precision and without the gorilla arm. Nobody wants to explore their augmented reality with a keyboard and a mouse. We’ve built a powerful and comfortable new way to interact with computers. All you need to do is to put our lamp on your desk. Augmented reality screen shot credit: Keytree UK Where to find it:...
Nomination for Auggie Award: Best AR Hardware Creator: Metaio Organization: Metaio =*=*=*= Description: Every popular representation of Augmented Reality has the same thing in common: they depict the constant use of computer vision through a connected device. Iron Man, Minority Report, Terminator, Avatar- short films like Sight and many more. The reality is that there aren’t any devices that exist today that are prepared to run even the most basic AR experiences 24/7 without severe drains on power and running the CPU processors so hot that they could potentially melt (really). Metaio has been working on research for accelerating augmented reality experiences on mobile devices, and has since found that there is only so much improvement possible from the software side. In order to run these “always on, always augmented” scenarios there needs to be hardware specifically designed to run AR experiences- hardware that’s integrated down to the silicon level. The majority of the “work” being done on a given mobile device is processed through the CPU- display, camera access, connecting to the internet and downloading and uploading information can tax a CPU (thousands of picojoules) while severely draining battery power. Metaio designed the so-called “AREngine” to divert processing power specifically away from the CPU to allow it to run cleaner, cooler and faster. Features: – between 0.01mm^2 – 0.02mm^2 – modular and able to be customized to nearly any semi-conductor platform in nearly any device (mobile, tablet, glasses, embedded systems like vehicles or smart appliances) In initial testing, integrating the AREngine on SOC (silicon platform) resulted in: – up to 6000% faster initialization (recognition, tracking) of the experience vs. same experience running on unoptimized device – up to 60% reduction in power consumption while running AR experiences on the device – any latency in the experience virtually disappears – tracking becomes more than 100% more robust – device is able to process point cloud tracking configurations twice the size in a fraction of the time It’s the first chipset of its kind- the only chipset ever designed specifically to accelerate augmented reality experiences. Where to find it: On display at the Metaio showcase at AWE, booth 73 Platforms: Mobile, Glasses, Stationary Device, Gesture Device, Internet of Things, Location Technologies Additional Screenshots:...
Nomination for Auggie Award: Best Mobile AR App Creator: Andrew Roth, Harriet Tubman Centre and AR Lab Organization: Future Stories =*=*=*= Description: Augmented Reality Freedom Stories – true stories of the Underground Railroad for JK- gr.12 Augmented Reality Freedom Stories highlights seldom told African Canadian histories from the era of the Canada/US Underground Railroad including Harriet Tubman’s efforts to bring American slaves to freedom in Canada. Primary and secondary documents have been hand-crafted in consultation with community partners into a unique experience that has been approved for use in schools as part of an Ontario primary school curriculum as part of the Breaking the Chains history project. Built in Unity + Vuforia, Augmented Reality Freedom Stories is free to download and uses only paper markers, reproductions of historical photographs in our case — making it easy and affordable for schools to begin using AR as part of the standard curriculum and to imagine how AR can communicate new stories and become an expressive tool for children to use to tell stories about their own lives. The architecture of these 30 original stories is simple and designed to mimic a child’s pop-up or magic tunnel book. The small scale of the AR Freedom Stories makes it possible to hold these small storyworlds — and history — in your hands. Install the app on your iPhone or iPad for free and download the markers at: http://futurestories.ca/tubman/ This experience works best on iPhone 4s or later. Community Partners: Essex County Black Historical Research Society; North American Black Historical Museum, Amherstburg; Windsor Public Library; NorthStar Community Centre at Windsor, Ontario; the Michigan Underground Railroad Network to Freedom; Detroit River International Historic Site Initiative; Nathaniel Dett Memorial Chapel and the Norval Johnson Library at Niagara Falls; Central Ontario Network for Black History; St. Catharines Museum; Salem Chapel, St. Catharines; Sandwich Baptist Church; Wellington County Historical Society; Black Pioneers of Wellington County; Buxton Museum and National Historic Site. Where to find it: download from the app store – search Augmented Reality Freedom Stories Platforms: Mobile, Gesture Device, Internet of Things Additional Screenshots:...
Nomination for Auggie Award: Best AR Campaign Creator: Jana Rodic Marko Todorovic Organization: LiveViewStudio =*=*=*= Description: CHALLENGE Science Festival Belgrade is an annual event that, through education and entertainment, attracts national and international visitors and exhibitors to make science accessible to all. LiveViewStudio was approached by MTS, regional leader in telecom services, to design an installation that would promote the use of ICT in education. The challenge was to create a solution that would attract an audience, foster interactivity and promote the MTS brand as an innovator. The solution proposed by LiveViewStudio was to design an interactive AR based installation. SOLUTION Augmented puzzle is an interactive installation where children assemble a puzzle, which through computer vision and Augmented reality triggers 3d animations of iconic scenes from the history of space explorations. The puzzle represents a part of LVS’s larger interest in connecting the analog and the digital, and creating novel experiences where interactions in the real world (real-world interactions) have their virtual consequences. The interactive puzzle consists of 9 cubes that can create 6 different pictures. Each picture, when assembled, comes alive triggering a 3d animation representing scenes such as the Apollo landing, black hole or first space travel. By rotating the cubes, or using the magic hand children can trigger different interactive scenarios. The aim of the installation is to create an analogue/digital playground that would engage children in a cross-media play, exploring how the merging of physical objects with computer technology can create a new interface for children education and entertainment. Since MTS is the leading mobile operator, the installation also included mobile AR to communicate the possibility of using a smartphone to get extra information and entertainment overlaid on common everyday objects, but also to introduce the potential of AR in outdoor advertising. Before the festival opening date the shop window was used to intrigue the visitors. When viewed with smartphone and junaio augmented reality browser the print triggered the animation of astronaut with the audio from Apollo landing. During the festival, children could also play with interactive coloring postcards. Filling the pattern on the postcard users would create the a marker that triggers 3d animations. CONCLUSION The installation exceeded expectation attracting significant attention of visitors. Augmented Reality proved as an effective tool for engaging people, while the prolonged interaction of participants with different AR experiences also pointed to the positive implications of using this technology in education and learning environments. Also it was featured in numerous newspapers, magazines, tv shows, websites and blogs Where to find it: The project involved kiosk installation and junaio channel developed for the event in december 2012. http://www.liveviewstudio.com/blog/ Platforms: Mobile, Stationary Device Additional Screenshots:...