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.

MIT's Projected Augmented Reality

MIT's Projected Augmented Reality

A very cool innovation from MIT's labs consisting of a carry on projector, a wristband that can read RFID tags, and a cellphone, enables one to augmented reality like never before. When the user takes a book into her hands, the wristband identifies the book, communicating this information to the cellphone which pulls reviews about the book from Amazon, and then those reviews are projected back onto the book itself.
Furthermore, placing colored caps, the phone's camera (I guess it's the phone's camera, they don't provide much information), can detect the user's gestures, enabling her to draw a circle on her wrist in order to project a watch; Creating a frame using your two hands, tells the phone to take a picture.
It's really amazing, and you must take a look at the following video:



True, carrying a projector around your neck can be considered cumbersome, but that's an amazing proof of concept. Once truly mobile projectors become cheaper, or head mounted displays become more popular, this future vision may turn to our everyday reality.

Link to Wired's report