Augmented reality
by dirk
Augmented Reality art
Augmented reality (AR) is the combination of the real world and computer-generated data. The most fancy form of AR was demonstrated at PICNIC, where you could put on a helmet with special glasses, camera, GPS and motion sensor. On the glasses, additional 3D objects are projected in virtual space, so that you have the impression to walk around these objects.
The Booijmans van Beuningen museum in Rotterdam will soon open an art exhibition making use of this technique, so visitors can literally manipulate old pottery and see details not possible to see with the real objects (25/10 - 04/01).
It may take a while before such glasses become small enough and the technology cheap enough for everyday applications, but already now many ideas of augmented reality are possible with a simple mobile phone. The camera in the phone, GPS and motion sensor are more and more becoming standard, so that the phone ‘knows’ exactly where it is located in space. Nokia demonstrated some cool application on their newest phone, the 6680.
Information that can be added to the real world is: metadata about the things around us, for example tourist information about the buildings you see. Just point your camera at a building and information will pop-up on the screen, telling you which building it is and more historical information about it. But this can also be done on the housing estate market, where the price could pop-up and pictures of the rooms inside.
More and more, people start talking about this as the web 3.0: internet becomes connected to the real world, every object becomes a potential gateway (or link) to the virtual world. And mobile will be a big enabler for this.
Tags: augmented reality, mobile, picnic, web 3.0