Three Augmented Reality Demos at SIGGRAPH 2010

Earlier this week I reported about an interesting paper accepted to this year's SIGGRAPH conference, studying how augmented reality makes cookies taste better. However, it's far from being the only appearance of AR in SIGGRAPH. Following are three more AR demos that took the stage during the conference:

Camera-less Smart Laser Projector
Using a laser beam both for scanning and projecting images, researchers from the University of Tokyo (where the cookies paper also comes from) gained several advantages over the usual projector+camera setup. Mainly, they eliminated the need to calibrate between the camera and projector, and gained the ability to scan 3d objects without stereoscopic cameras.



Camera-less Smart Laser Projector. Cassinelli, Zerroug, Ishikawa, Angesleva. SIGGRAPH 2010

QR-Code Calibration for Mobile Augmented Reality
This work by researchers of Kyushu University uses QR codes in order to fix the user position in the world. It shows you the problem with academic conferences. By the time your papers gets published, some company may already deploy similar technology in the real world, as Metaio did with Junaio.



QR-code calibration for mobile augmented reality applications: linking a unique physical location to the digital world. Nikolaos, Kiyoshi. SIGGRAPH 2010.

Canon brings to life dinosaurs
Not only researchers come to SIGGRAPH, but companies as well. Canon demoed head mounted assisted mixed reality in their booth, featuring a cute velociratpor like dino (lacking feathers, they should get some new biology books). Jump to the 25th second to see it in action: