Say hello to ARCore

Recently I wrote about the possible impact of ARKit on the augmented reality market. We didn’thave to wait long for the first effects, the ARCore.

What is ARCore ?

ARCore is a platform for building augmented reality applications on Android. That sounds like a very good slogan, so let us try a bit simpler.
ARCore is nothing more than a set of tools that handles the most complex operation for the programmer, it brings AR capabilities to a wide audience.
ARCore does not need any special equipment, it uses standard camera in your phone to bring AR to life. It focuses on three main elements:

1.       Motion tracking – phone can understand and track its position relative to the world

2.       Environment understanding – phone can detect the size and location of horizontal surfaces

3.       Light estimation – phone can estimate the environment current lightning conditions

All this combined, gives us a lot of new possibilities on Android phones.

Limitation

On current stage it is hard to talk about limitation. For sure the biggest problem is the small number of supported devices. At the moment of writing this article, only three phones are officially supported: Pixel, Pixel XL and Samsung Galaxy S8. Why S8+ or Note 8 are not supported ? Only Google knows. The amount of devices should increase with time as Google is talking with other producers. We will see.

In terms of software limitation as I wrote it is hard to say. Currently it is even hard to find any interesting NEW project based on ARCore beside those officially introduced along with the information about ARCore. For sure possibilities are big, but how big, where do they end, those are the big questions. Again, we need to wait to get the answer on that.

What next ?

What can we do ? We need to wait and observe. I`m guessing that in short time we will see a lot of interesting tests done by individual programmers and companies. Those ideas, concepts, prototypes will show us how far we can go with the current version, what we can build with ARCore, will it be a good and true answer to Apple ARKit. I hope so. At the moment we have those two players on the field but we can’t forget about Facebook and their plans to invest 3 billion dollars in the AR platform. And of course we have Microsoft with the HoloLens. For sure thanks to Google and Apple, augmented reality is getting wider audience, people see that this technology carries huge possibilities. This can bring the demand and every time when there is a demand someone need to satisfy it. For sure we are standing in front of huge milestone for the augmented reality.

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Is Apple the game changer for Augmented Reality ?

Some time ago I wrote an article about how augmented reality needs Apple. Not for revolution ideas, not for revolution projects but just for the brand. For many years Apple is an icon of innovation, almost every one of their ideas is a bestseller. Now we have the ARKit. What now ?

Is this what we wanted ?

When I was writing my previous article I was sure that answer on this question will be very easy, but now…I’m not so sure anymore.

Yes, because it brings augmented reality to wider audience. Yes, because it presents possibilities which are brought by AR to our every day life. ARKit allows to materialize a lot of different and exciting concepts. This is fantastic ! No doubt about it. This is also a great boost for other producers. We are in the middle of technological war between manufacturers, if someone is entering market with a new idea, others will try to catch up. Just today I saw an article about possibility of a special version of the Samsung Note 8 with Project Tango. That is what I wanted, the race for augmented reality mounted into the smartphone. Just for that I must say “THANK YOU APPLE !”.

Is there a “no” ? Unfortunately yes. I’ve understood it during my research. It is not about technology itself. It is rather more about content that it is providing. Recently we saw similar situation with Windows mobile platform. The operating system was cool, it was something new and fresh BUT it didn’t provide enough content so it was disqualified for many. ARKit itself is great, it gives the developers a lot of new possibilities but we still do not have enough content. Of course you can say “give them some more time” but I think it is not the only factor. We still have problems with finding useful use cases for augmented reality.

How to sum this up ?

1.       Apple done a fantastic work for spreading augmented reality to consumers

2.       It is an interesting tool that gives great possibilities for experiments

3.       We need to find usage for AR in our lives. Without that it will be just a gadget for small group of geeks

I’m looking forward for new projects, I want to observe what this will bring for us, AR fans.

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Augmented reality in business

Business, nothing new. We are all connected with this word in some way. What can change in future ? What we can get from implementing augmented reality in business ? Is this only a new fancy "gadget" or maybe it will give something valuable that allow to improve sale and/or product itself ?

Augmented reality = new possibilities

Augmented reality can offer a lot more than only couple of cool visual effect on screen of your smartphone. Why I'm talking about smartphone ? Because - at least for now - augmented reality possibilities will be limited to mobile devices in business (don't worry there will be a exception). Glass type project are still in minority, they need still a lot of work before we see them in on our faces. But that isn't a problem. You can already see people in stores taking pictures of floor panels to rethink everything in home. But what to do to make it better ?

So what new possibilities we can get from augmented reality ? Lets talk about couple of them.

Furniture shops

Did you ever tried to furnish a room ? Do you know how many questions you need to answer if you want to do it properly ? Do you know how many doubts you have when you want to pick something ? How it will look like when I put it near this closet ?

Project like this are the answer:

This is a great usage of augmented reality with mapping over a known picture. You can simply put magazine when you want to put new furniture and check how it will look like. Very handy and useful.

Important thing is that you need an object to map the virtual element. It allows you to move around it and check from different sides. It allows to scale to product so you can really act like you have a new sofa in the room. Putting only images on the screen is a really bad idea and gives to user a poor effect. Example below (don't do it like this ! ):

Augmented reality + factories = improvements

Ok, now lets go to different part of augmented reality. Goggles. What are the problems related with jobs related with manual work in - for example - factory that produces cars ? Two most common are:

    1. Human errors during assemble

    2. Cost related with learning new worker

Both of them can be fixed or at least reduced using augmented reality. Imagine a worker with special goggles that analyze parts in front of the worker and shows what should go where and how it should be connected/assembled. It will strongly reduce count of errors made by human. It will help to increase quality of the product with out increasing the cost of the work. This is the path which business should follow.

Now the second case. If the new worker will also have same glasses, it will allow to reduce time needed from a senior worker. It will increase his time in the job that he should do. And again, with out increasing the costs we increase performance.

There is a lot of augmented reality project related with business and big data. One of my favorite is Daqri. Helmet that their building is a fantastic usage of augmented reality, it has endless potential and possibilities.

Not only Daqri, we also have interesting project from VW:

Marketing

Ok now something easy. How to interest a potential client with our product ? We need to do something cool ! Something that will make him to pay attention on the product. Augmented reality is a fantastic tool for that. Look at this Coca-Cola campaign:



So easy, and so great effect. Augmented reality is a powerful tool that refers to a very important feeling...fun. Lets be honest, we all want to have fun, we all want to spend a good time. If you give a tool that will give fun to client and allow you to focus him on the product, than you`re a winner. If you want to do that think about augmented reality. 



This even don't have to be a strict commercial related with your product, if you can softly mark your brand there, than it is very often more than enough. Look on the possibilities of augmented reality in marketing. I shown only two examples but marketing business has done homework. Usage of this technology is more and more often. And why it is so big success ? Because for common people this is still technology about witch they don't know a lot



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3 Augmented reality paths

Augmented reality isn't new technology. It is with us from a long time now and still we're not even close to use full potential of it. On one side this is great, because it still fascinates a lot of people, it allows us to search for new possibilities. On the other hand....we want more ! and we want it now !

In this article I want to describe 3 main paths of augmented reality, paths that will close this technology to common people in their daily behavior. The best thing is that this paths are already known, but as for me, not used in 100% yet.

1. Moving in city

What can be more common than moving in city? In the city that you're living, or in the city in witch you're on a business trip or on holidays. There is always something to search, something to find.

Now imagine that in front f your eye you see something similar to the picture above. It is much easier to find the thing that your looking for. Isn't it ? It is much easier to navigate. You don't even need your glasses, smartphone with function like this is more than enough.

This also opens new way to advertise your business. Virtual signs, virtual signboards, visible from couple of kilometers. Visible when needed. Interactive advert that allow to promote best things for people that are near is a bigger chance for getting them. If you combine that with collecting interesting data you can set advert according to person interests. Everything described above will help to navigate and move in the city, and cities nowadays are getting bigger and bigger. Amount of services, shops, interesting places, interesting things is getting harder to embrace by regular person.

This kind of application should also support help related to public transport. In days when traffic jam is a regular day in city, public transport is getting more and more important. There is a lot of applications that help you plan your trip by displaying info about which bus and when you should use, where and when you should change it etc. But all this are only static information. It should adapt, it should inform you when there is possibility to change the route on better or faster one. You don't need to do it, but you can, and that is why you should be inform. Marking stops, showing time of arrival, all this is a must have in future city, all this will make life a bit easier.

2. Interactive magazine

Who read Harry Potter? Who watched the movie about the little wizard? Do you remember how newspapers looked? They were animated by magik, pictures there were like live scene. Awsome thing is that you don't need magic for that.

Look at this:

or this

Why adverts can't look like this in a regular newspaper or magazine ? Why we're not using so commonly already? Isn't this much better? Everybody complains that they hate ads, but to be honest, everybody is looking on them and even are checking the content. For this people this should be made, if you want to sell a good product and you want to promote it in a good way, do it in a right way! This is much more interesting, it allow to deliver much more information to potential customer, and ads are all about that.

Ok lets talk less about money. Everybody is talking that traditional newspapers are dying. Everybody is looking for information in the internet, they can read there, they can see more pictures, they can watch movie with more information. Augmented reality allows to put all of this in a simple, daily newspaper. The most interesting facts can be upgraded by adding movies, or virtual gallery for it on the screen of your smartphone. Think about that!

3. Museums and not only

Did you every think how some streets looked 10, 20, 50 years ago ? Standard museum is to boring for you ? Augmented reality already have solutions for that and I really hope it will evolve  more and more in this direction.

There is a lot of projects sponsored by museums that allow you to look and today places in different way and it is a great news. People nowadays often forget about the past, about lessons provided by history. Technology is moving forward very fast but that does not allow us to forget about the things that passed, about places, people, moments, events. We can learn a lot from our history. We need to remember. Augmented reality open new doors for that. It helps to interest kids with things that couple years ago were to boring for them. Look at examples below:

Isn't it awesome ? Look at people faces. Everybody are thrilled, everybody is interested. Passing knowledge, learning don't need to be boring, it by fascinating, interesting, it really can be cool. Augmented reality should be developed in this branch, we need to find more and more usages of it in name of history, knowledge and education

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Mobile augmented reality

This is the first post on this blog and it will be a short one. I'll come back to this topic in future. I'll wirte about one of my favourite topics which is augmented reality on mobile platforms.

Nowadays everyone has at least one or two mobile devices always with him. Many of you, probably have your mobile phones in range of couple of meters for whole 24 hours. Think about it :)

That is why augmented reality has so big potential and it is getting bigger and bigger. It should be considered in two ways:

1. mobile phones / tablets

2. goggles (not Google ;) ) with augmented reality software

The first one has a bit smaller range, it still need some actions from the user and it is not as flexible and comfortable as it could or even as it should be. BUT it has some cool usages...yes yes I'm talking about games. Spend couple of minutes with google and you can see how awesome ideas people have just to entertain us using camera in your mobile phone and couple of tricks.

Of course you don't need to use camera to say that your software is based on augmented reality but as for me this is a very important piece of it.

The goggles...this is the thing that fascinates me a lot. Think about every sci-fi movie, there are always a cool looking goggles that show you a lot of data. Everybody want it ! I was really excited with first google glasses but it wasn't as cool as it should be. Using it was uncomfortable. True augmented reality goggles should be transparent for user. They should look like normal glasses and they should be also used like normal glasses. This is very important thing and many people forget about that. Augmented reality should be almost invisible. It should be like a small imp on your shoulder invisible for everybody that helps you in your every day things.

As for me augmented reality is still song of the future. Of course this is not a new technology. It is around for a long time but most of us don't think about that while watching TV or looking and the photos from jet fighters. But those are very specialized tasks, augmented reality still has some problems to get into to our every day routine and this is the goal, this is the moment that I'm waiting for.

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