LearnAR - Augmented Reality for Schools

LearnAR - Augmented Reality for Schools

Augmatic the British company founded by James Alliban (you may remember him from that augmented reality business card) has launched a new tool, called LearnAR.

It is a pack of ten curriculum resources for teachers and students to explore by combining the real world with virtual content using a web cam.

Some of those demos are brilliant. The Geiger counter and physiology ones seem to provide real value when coming to teach such subjects. On the other hand, I really don't find any benefit of using the English application over a computer game. In a sense LearnAR is showing how gimmicky and how useful AR can be at the same time.

For another perspective on using AR for educational purposes, you should really check out Gail Carmichael's blog. Since she's doing her PhD on this subject, she has blogged about some very interesting concepts.

As for LearnAR, you can learn more about it on James Alliban's blog.

2d Sketches Become 3d Reality

2d Sketches Become 3d Reality

The guys at Hit Lab New Zealand and the Visual Media Lab at the Ben Gurion University, Israel, have uploaded a new video presenting the results of their ISMAR09 paper "In-Place 3D Sketching for Authoring and Augmenting Mechanical Systems". Since the paper is not online yet, I can't really tell how much of it is really automatic, and how robust is it, but the video is nothing less than magical:



I really envy those future physics high-school students...

Augmented Mammals of the past

Augmented Mammals of the past

Last week I wrote about using augmented reality to experience hypothetical animals from the far future. Now, the American Museum of Natural History in New York brings us augmented mammals of the distant past*:



I don't have my web camera to try it out, but as you can see, there's nothing special there. Currently, you can only play with the batodonoides, the smallest mammal to ever live, though you can leave them your email to get an update when they add other models. It's just a nice break from all those commercially oriented AR applications.
Via Tethys News.

* Well, to be truthful, the exhibition is called extreme mammals, and some of the mammals are contemporary and are still living among us (if you happen to live in Australia).

Augmented Field Guide

Augmented Field Guide

The New York times ran a story yesterday about a new breed of field guides, those made not out of paper, but out of data bytes and computer vision algorithms.
The article mostly revolved around a new application coming to the iPhone, that enables users to take photographs of leaves and by doing so identify the tree to which they belong.

The computer tree guide is good at narrowing down and finding the right species near the top of the list of possibilities, he said. “Instead of flipping through a field guide with 1,000 images, you are given 5 or 10 choices,” he said. The right choice may be second instead of first sometimes, “but that doesn’t really matter,” he said. “You can always use the English language — a description of the bark, for instance — to do the final identification.”

The technology comes from this group at Columbia University, which on their site you can find the academic papers describing the algorithms that were used in prior incarnations of that application. Now, I know some of you will say that this is not AR, since no image-registering was involved. Well, it fits my definition of AR (it augments our reality), and if you are not convinced yet that this item belongs on this humble blog, take a look at the next clip, that involves a HUD, and fiduciary markers:



Anyway, I find this use of AR fascinating. It could really connect kids with nature, detaching them from the computer screen for a while, and transforming any outside walk into an exploration. What do you think?

Two Interesting AR Talks

Two Interesting AR Talks

Short update for today (I need some rest, too many posts in the last few days).
First, TED uploaded MIT's Pattie Maes' talk, about projected augmented reality, which we talked about here (and so did the rest of the blogosphere).



Next, Ori Inbar of Games Alfresco, has uploaded his talk from the WARM 09 conference. In his talk he discusses his vision of AR games as an educating tool (if I got it right), and why we should target kids as the early adopters of augmented reality. It's really interesting, though I'm still not that sure AR is the best technology for enriching kids' education experience (see this talk from TED 2009 for another compelling concept). Ori's talk is embedded below, but you should go read his post and the comments following it.


Augmented Reality Today: WARM '09 from Ori Inbar on Vimeo.