Weekly Linkfest

Weekly Linkfest

As usual, here's a bunch of links to augmented reality related news bits that have accumulated in my inbox during the week:

• There's no end to the augmented reality browsers phenomenon. Cyclopedia is yet another browser that is based on Wikipedia, Bradesco is helping you find your way around Brazil, and AugmentThis! lets you upload kml files and share them with others.
• Peak.ar on the other hand is a specialized browser from Salzburg Research that only lets you see the names of mountain tops around the world.
• While Wikitude is finally available for the iPhone (but you wouldn't know that if you had visited www.wikitude.org as to the writing of this post).
  
• So, with so many AR browser available, how are they all doing, buisness wise? Gene Becker collected some appstore statistics, that shows that AcrossAir's applications are leading in terms of downloads among the non-free applications available on the American appstore.
• Joe Lamantia on why creating AR content should be accessible to everyone, and how to make it so.
• What's that augmented reality that I mention so much? I guess most of this blog's patrons already know, but here's Scientific American explantion, though I think YDreams' post is far better.
• Campaigns of the week: One for a game named Operation Flashpoint, the other for Fox's Dollhouse (which looks extra sleazy).

This week's video is a lovely tour de force from Oxford's Active Vision Labratory's Robert Castle. Although Ori posted a sneak peak to ISMAR 09, he somehow missed this video. It shows an extension to the PTAMM system that allows "multiple objects to be recognized and localized within multiple maps."



Have a nice week!

PTAM + AR on an iPhone 3G

PTAM + AR on an iPhone 3G

Usually I try to avoid having a post consisting of just a Youtube clip. But I'm too tired for a full blown post, and I'll compensate you over the weekend. I promise.
So here's Oxford University's Georg Klein, running a port of the PTAM algorithm on the iPhone. It's shiny!

Oxford Augments your Museum Visit

Oxford Augments your Museum Visit

I know, I used the "* Augments your Museum Visit" template just yesterday. However, unlike Alcatel-Lucent, Oxford really does have a working technology demo to brag around with. Robert Castle of the Active Vision Labratory at Oxford University has posted a few videos earlier this week showcasing his "Parallel Tracking and Multiple Mapping" technique for augmented reality. In a nutshell (and I can't say I understand it in any deeper sense), this technique uses SIFT for object identification and SLAM for camera tracking, in order to identify and augment the current scene.
This technique has won the ISMAR 2008 tracking competition, and the best paper award at ISWC 2008. Apart from that, the following video is cool -



You could see the other 18 videos and read more details here.