Augmented Reality (AR)

5 reasons iPhone 8 will be an augmented reality game changer — from techradar.com by Mark Knapp
Augmented Reality (AR) will be everywhere!

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

Most of us are at least vaguely familiar with augmented reality thanks to Pokemon Go sticking Charmanders in our sock drawers and Snapchat letting us spew stars and rainbows from our mouths, but Apple’s iPhone 8 is going to push AR to point of ubiquity. When the iPhone 8 launches, we’ll all be seeing the world differently.

iPhones are everywhere, so AR will be everywhere!

The iPhone 8 will bring with it iOS 11, and with iOS 11 will come Apple’s AR. Since the iPhone 8 is all but guaranteed to be a best-seller and earlier iPhones and iPads will be widely updated to iOS 11, Apple will have a massive AR platform. Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, believes it will be “the largest AR platform in the world,” which will lure AR developers en masse.

Apple AR has huge potential in education.
Apple has been positioning itself in the education world for years, with programs like iTunes U and iBook, as well as efforts to get iPads into classrooms. AR already has major prospects in education, with the ability to make Museum exhibits interactive and to put a visually explorable world in front of users.

Apple could guide you around your city using augmented reality — from techcrunch.com by Romain Dillet, with thanks to Woontack Woo for this resource

Startup Simulanis uses augmented and virtual reality to skill professionals — from economictimes.indiatimes.com by Vinay Dwivedi

Excerpt:

[India] The widening gap between the skills required by businesses and the know-how of a large number of engineering students got Raman Talwar started on his entrepreneurial journey.
…
Delhi-based Simulanis harnesses AR and VR technology to help companies across industries— pharmaceuticals, auto, FMCG and manufacturing—train their staff. It continues to work in the engineering education sector and has developed applications that assist students visualise challenging subjects and concepts.

Our products help students and trainees learn difficult concepts easily and interactively through immersive AR-VR and 3-D gamification methods,” says Talwar. Simulanis’ offerings include an AR learning platform, Saral, and a gamified learning platform, Protocol.

Also see:

Want to learn a new language? With this AR app, just point & tap

On 08/18/2017, in 21st century, 24x7x365 access, A/V -- audio/visual, Apple, assistive technologies, Augmented Reality (AR), computer science, ideas, innovation, languages and translation, learning, programming, tools, user experience (UX), by Daniel Christian

Want to learn a new language? With this AR app, just point & tap — from fastcodesign.com by Mark Wilson
A new demo shows how augmented reality could redefine apps as we know them.

Excerpt:

There’s a new app gold rush. After Facebook and Apple both released augmented reality development kits in recent months, developers are demonstrating just what they can do with these new technologies. It’s a race to invent the future first.

To get a taste of how quickly and dramatically our smartphone apps are about to change, just take a look at this little demo by front end engineer Frances Ng, featured on Prosthetic Knowledge. Just by aiming her iPhone at various objects and tapping, she can both identify items like lamps and laptops, and translate their names to a number of different languages. Bye bye, multilingual dictionaries and Google translate. Hello, “what the heck is the Korean word for that?”

My first attempt on #ARKit and #CoreML using the pre-built model Inception v3! ARKit is awesome!!! pic.twitter.com/62d7vZcgAt

— Frances Ng (@franxyzxyz) August 14, 2017

Also see:

Apple ARKit & Machine Learning Come Together Making Smarter Augmented Reality — from next.reality.news by Jason Odom

Excerpt:

The world is a massive place, especially when you consider the field of view of your smartglasses or mobile device. To fulfill the potential promise of augmented reality, we must find a way to fill that view with useful and contextual information. Of course, the job of creating contextual, valuable information, to fill the massive space that is the planet earth, is a daunting task to take on. Machine learning seems to be one solution many are moving toward.

Tokyo, Japan based web developer, Frances Ng released a video on Twitter showing off her first experiments with Apple’s ARKit and CoreML, Apple’s machine learning system. As you can see in the gifs below, her mobile device is being used to recognize a few objects around her room, and then display the name of the identified objects.

“We’re developing a technology that’s going to be able to span across generations to tell a story”

On 08/14/2017, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, attention, Augmented Reality (AR), education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, history, K-12 related, learning, learning ecosystem, teaching & learning, tools, user experience (UX), vendors, by Daniel Christian

Davy Crockett to give tours of Alamo in new augmented reality app — from mysanantonio.com by Samantha Ehlinger

Excerpt:

Using a smart phone, users will be able to see and interact with computer-generated people and scenes from the past — overlayed on top of the very real and present-day Alamo. The app will also show the Alamo as it was at different points in history, and tell the story of the historic battle through different perspectives of the people (like Crockett) who were there. The app includes extra features users can buy, much like Pokémon Go.

“We’re making this into a virtual time machine so that if I’m standing on this spot and I look at, oh well there’s Davy Crockett, then I can go back a century and I can see the mission being built,” Alamo Reality CEO Michael McGar said. The app will allow users to see the Alamo not only as it was in 1836, but as it was before and after, McGar said.

“We’re developing a technology that’s going to be able to span across generations to tell a story”

— Lane Traylor

Augmented Reality Technology: A student creates the closest thing yet to a magic ring — from forbes.com by Kevin Murnane

Excerpt:

Nat Martin set himself the problem of designing a control mechanism that can be used unobtrusively to meld AR displays with the user’s real-world environment. His solution was a controller in the shape of a ring that can be worn on the user’s finger. He calls it Scroll. It uses the ARKit software platform and contains an Arduino circuit board, a capacitive sensor, gyroscope, accelerometer, and a Softpot potentiometer. Scroll works with any AR device that supports the Unity game engine such as Google Cardboard or Microsoft’s Hololens.

Also see:

Scroll from Nat on Vimeo.

Addendum on 8/15/17:

New iOS 11 ARKit Demo Shows Off Drawing With Fingers In Augmented Reality [Video] — from redmondpie.com by Oliver Haslam |

Excerpt:

When Apple releases iOS 11 to the public next month, it will also release ARKit for the first time. The framework, designed to make bringing augmented reality to iOS a reality was first debuted during the opening keynote of WWDC 2017 when Apple announced iOS 11, and ever since then we have been seeing new concepts and demos be released by developers.

Those developers have given us a glimpse of what we can expect when apps taking advantage of ARKit start to ship alongside iOS 11, and the latest of those is a demonstration in which someone’s finger is used to draw on a notepad.

Campus Technology Announces 2017 Impact Award Honorees

On 08/02/2017, in Augmented Reality (AR), colleges, community colleges, Daniel S. Christian, digital learning, digital storytelling, education technology, higher education, ideas, immersion, innovation, IT in HE, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, by Daniel Christian

Campus Technology Announces 2017 Impact Award Honorees — from campustechnology.com

Excerpt:

“When you consider the use of technology in education, one of the most important factors is impact — how it benefits students, improves teaching, streamlines costs, contributes to the community, furthers the institutional mission, etc.,” said Rhea Kelly, executive editor of Campus Technology. “These 10 projects are making a difference in higher education in variety of inspiring ways, and we are so pleased to recognize them with this year’s Impact Awards.”

From DSC:
I was a Member of the Review Board for this year’s Impact Awards program. As such, I want to extend my sincere congratulations to these recipients! I also want to extend congratulations to the many other people/organizations who — though they didn’t win an award this year — are doing some great work out there as well!

How SLAM technology is redrawing augmented reality’s battle lines [Tabatabaie]

On 08/01/2017, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), education technology, emerging technologies, Facebook / Meta Platforms, Google, interaction design, interactivity, tools, trends, user experience (UX), by Daniel Christian

How SLAM technology is redrawing augmented reality’s battle lines — from venturebeat.com by Mojtaba Tabatabaie

Excerpt (emphasis DSC):

In early June, Apple introduced its first attempt to enter AR/VR space with ARKit. What makes ARKit stand out for Apple is a technology called SLAM (Simultaneous Localization And Mapping). Every tech giant — especially Apple, Google, and Facebook — is investing heavily in SLAM technology and whichever takes best advantage of SLAM tech will likely end up on top.

SLAM is a technology used in computer vision technologies which gets the visual data from the physical world in shape of points to make an understanding for the machine. SLAM makes it possible for machines to “have an eye and understand” what’s around them through visual input. What the machine sees with SLAM technology from a simple scene looks like the photo above, for example.

Using these points machines can have an understanding of their surroundings. Using this data also helps AR developers like myself to create much more interactive and realistic experiences. This understanding can be used in different scenarios like robotics, self-driving cars, AI and of course augmented reality.

The simplest form of understanding from this technology is recognizing walls and barriers and also floors. Right now most AR SLAM technologies like ARKit only use floor recognition and position tracking to place AR objects around you, so they don’t actually know what’s going on in your environment to correctly react to it. More advanced SLAM technologies like Google Tango, can create a mesh of our environment so not only the machine can tell you where the floor is, but it can also identify walls and objects in your environment allowing everything around you to be an element to interact with.

The company with the most complete SLAM database will likely be the winner. This database will allow these giants to have an eye on the world metaphorically, so, for example Facebook can tag and know the location of your photo by just analyzing the image or Google can place ads and virtual billboards around you by analyzing the camera feed from your smart glasses. Your self-driving car can navigate itself with nothing more than visual data.

2017 Ed Tech Trends: The Halfway Point [Aldridge, Christian, Kelly, Powell, & Ventimiglia]

On 07/31/2017, in 21st century, analytics, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Augmented Reality (AR), bots, change, Daniel S. Christian, data related items, digital learning, education technology, emerging technologies, future, future of higher education, game-changing environment, Google, higher education, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, innovation, intelligent systems, intelligent tutoring, leadership, learning, learning ecosystem, Learning from the Living [Class] Room, maker movement, robotics, society, student-related, tools, trends, universities, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, vision/possibilities, by Daniel Christian

2017 Ed Tech Trends: The Halfway Point — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly
Four higher ed IT leaders weigh in on the current state of education technology and what’s ahead.

This article includes some perspectives shared from the following 4 IT leaders:

Susan Aldridge, Senior Vice President for Online Learning, Drexel University (PA); President, Drexel University Online
Daniel Christian, Adjunct Faculty Member, Calvin College
Marci Powell, CEO/President, Marci Powell & Associates; Chair Emerita and Past President, United States Distance Learning Association
Phil Ventimiglia, Chief Innovation Officer, Georgia State University

Also see:

Higher ed forges ahead on immersive tech integration – from educationdive.com by Pat Donachie

New app is helping the U of Washington community “experience” a new CS building 18 months before its doors open to students

On 07/24/2017, in 21st century, Augmented Reality (AR), computer science, ideas, innovation, learning spaces, visualizing information, by Daniel Christian

Mortenson Creates First-of-Its-Kind Augmented Reality App for Construction Visualization — from prnewswire.com
Akin to Pokemon Go, the new mobile app is helping the University of Washington community “experience” a new computer science building 18 months before its doors open to students

Excerpt:

SEATTLE, July 18, 2017 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — After pioneering the use of virtual design in construction, Mortenson Construction has developed a first-of-its-kind augmented reality (AR) mobile app to help the University of Washington community “see” the future CSE2 computer science building – well before its doors open to students in January of 2019. Similar to the popular Pokémon Go, users can either point their smartphones at the construction site on campus – or at a printed handout if off campus – to experience a life-like digital representation of the future CSE2 building.

4 ways augmented reality could change corporate training forever –from by Jay Samit

Excerpt:

In the coming years, machine learning and augmented reality will likely take both educational approaches to the next level by empowering workers to have the latest, most accurate information available in context, when and where they need it most.

Here are four ways that digital reality can revolutionize corporate training…

…augmented reality (AR) is poised not only to address issues faced by our aging workforce, but to fundamentality increase productivity by changing how all employees are trained in the future.

More Than Just Cool? — from insidehighered.com by Nick Roll
Virtual and augmented realities make headway in courses on health care, art history and social work.

Excerpt:

When Glenn Gunhouse visits the Pantheon, you would think that the professor, who teaches art and architecture history, wouldn’t be able to keep his eyes off the Roman temple’s columns, statues or dome. But there’s something else that always catches his eye: the jaws of the tourists visiting the building, and the way they all inevitably drop.

“Wow.”

There’s only one other way that Gunhouse has been able to replicate that feeling of awe for his students short of booking expensive plane tickets to Italy. Photos, videos and even three-dimensional walk-throughs on a computer screen don’t do it: It’s when his students put on virtual reality headsets loaded with images of the Pantheon.

…nursing schools are using virtual reality or augmented reality to bring three-dimensional anatomy illustrations off of two-dimensional textbook pages.

Also see:

Oculus reportedly planning $200 standalone wireless VR headset for 2018 — from techcrunch.com by Darrell Etherington

Excerpt:

Facebook is set to reveal a standalone Oculus virtual reality headset sometime later this year, Bloomberg reports, with a ship date of sometime in 2018. The headset will work without requiring a tethered PC or smartphone, according to the report, and will be branded with the Oculus name around the world, except in China, where it’ll carry Xiaomi trade dress and run some Xiaomi software as part of a partnership that extends to manufacturing plans for the device.

Facebook Inc. is taking another stab at turning its Oculus Rift virtual reality headset into a mass-market phenomenon. Later this year, the company plans to unveil a cheaper, wireless device that the company is betting will popularize VR the way Apple did the smartphone.

Source

2017 Teaching with Technology Survey [Rhea Kelly; Campus Technology]

On 07/12/2017, in 21st century, 3D, A/V -- audio/visual, Augmented Reality (AR), Bring your own device (BYOD), collaboration, colleges, community colleges, digital audio, digital learning, digital photography, digital video, e-books, e-publishing related items (EPUB and more), education, education technology, emerging technologies, face-to-face, faculty/staff, internet, IT in HE, learning, learning ecosystem, learning spaces, mobile learning, mobile technologies, pedagogy, personalized/customized learning, smart classrooms, student-related, tablets, teaching & learning, technology (general), the downsides of how people use tech, tools, trends, United States, universities, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, wearables, web-based collaboration, youth, by Daniel Christian

2017 Teaching with Technology Survey — from campustechnology.com by Rhea Kelly

Excerpts:

We asked faculty to dish on their use of technology, likes and dislikes, views of the future and more. Here’s what they told us.

“ARKit: AR on 195 million iPhones & iPads by year end” plus 3 other items re: AR

On 07/06/2017, in Apple, attention, Augmented Reality (AR), computer science, education technology, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, human-computer interaction (HCI), innovation, interactivity, user experience (UX), by Daniel Christian

ARKit: Augmented Reality on 195 million iPhones and iPads by year end — from blog.mapbox.com by Ceci Alvarez

Excerpt:

Apple’s ARKit just made augmented reality (AR) mainstream — and together with the Maps SDK for Unity, will fundamentally change the types of location-based apps that developers can build.

Using ARKit plus Maps SDK for Unity allows you record your bike ride up to Twin Peaks in Strava and project the map of your route on your coffee table. As you plan your next vacation over dinner, you’ll be able to open your Lonely Planet app and have the Big Sur coast hovering in front of you as you browse the different camp sites. Or, when you’re at work appraising a property for flood insurance, you could just tilt up your phone and see the flood plain in front of you, and which parts of the property are susceptible to flooding. Or, when you’re teaching a geology class you project the evolution of Pangea in 3D for students to visualize instead of being limited by 2D images in textbooks.

Inside Peter Jackson’s New Augmented Reality Studio — from cartoonbrew.com by Ian Failes

Excerpt:

At Apple’s recent Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in San Jose, one of the stand-out demos was from Wingnut AR, the augmented reality studio started by director Peter Jackson and his partner Fran Walsh.

On stage, Wingnut AR’s creative director Alasdair Coull demonstrated a tabletop ar experience made using Apple’s upcoming augmented reality developer kit called ARKit and Epic Games’ Unreal Engine 4. The experience blended a real world environment – the tabletop – with digital objects, in this case a sci-fi location complete with attacking spaceships, while being viewed live, on an iPad.

Soon your desk will be a computer too — from wired.com by Elizabeth Stinson

More Fun Uses for Augmented Reality & Your iPhone Keep Popping Up — from ar.reality.news by Juliet Gallagher

Excerpt:

Developers are really having a field day with Apple’s ARKit, announced last month. Since it’s release to developers, videos have been appearing all over the Internet of the different ways that developers are getting creative with the ARKit using iPhones and iPads.

Here are a few videos of the cool things that are happening using the ARKit:

Addendum on 7/10/17:

Google Lens offers a snapshot of the future for augmented reality and AI — from android authority.com by Adam Sinicki

http://www.androidauthority.com/google-lens-augmented-reality-785836/

Google Lens is a tool that effectively brings search into the real world. The idea is simple: you point your phone at something around you that you want more information on and Lens will provide that information.

Augmented reality ‘is virtually unlimited’ for Apple [Griffith]

On 06/30/2017, in 21st century, A/V -- audio/visual, Apple, Augmented Reality (AR), Australia, business, career development, computer science, corporate / business world, human-computer interaction (HCI), platforms, programming, tools, trends, United States, user experience (UX), vendors, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Augmented reality ‘is virtually unlimited’ for Apple — from theaustralian.com.au by Chris Griffith

Excerpt:

Apple’s entry into augmented reality is gathering pace at an amazing rate, says one of its vice-presidents visiting Australia.

In an interview with The Australian yesterday, Apple vice-president of product marketing Greg “Joz” Joswiak said the enthusiasm of Apple’s development community building augmented reality (AR) applications had been “unbelievable”.

“They’ve built everything from virtual tape measures (to) ballerinas made out of wood dancing on floors. It’s absolutely incredible what people are doing in so little time.”

He said in the commercial space, AR applications would evolve for shopping, furniture placement, education, training and services.

Also see:

Five Augmented Reality Experiences That Bring Museum Exhibits to Life — from smithsonianmag.com by Jennifer Billock
AR features allow visitors to explore historical spaces and artifacts in new ways

Excerpt:
Imagine being surrounded by a world of ghosts, things that aren’t there unless you look hard enough, and in the right way. With augmented reality technology, that’s possible—and museums are using it to their advantage. With augmented reality, museums are superimposing ther virtual world right over what’s actually in front of you, bringing exhibits and artifacts to life in new ways.

These five spots are great examples of how augmented reality is enhancing the museum experience.

Also see:

University Of Michigan Deploys Augmented Reality System To Aid Testing Of Automated Vehicles — from forbes.com by Sam Abuelsamid

Augmented Reality in Education: An infographic (& more) from NJIT

On 06/28/2017, in attention, Augmented Reality (AR), computer science, education, education technology, educational games / serious games, emerging technologies, engagement / engaging students, human-computer interaction (HCI), student-related, tools, user experience (UX), by Daniel Christian

Augmented Reality in Education — from graduatedegrees.online.njit.edu

Excerpt:

Augmented reality has become a field with limitless possibilities. It holds huge promise for improving educational systems across the globe. In the last 2 to 3 years, augmented reality (AR) has grown into a technology that is set to revolutionize numerous sectors, most importantly education. To learn more, check out the infographic created by the New Jersey Institute of Technology’s Online Masters in Computer Science program.

In today’s tech world, often it’s a “winner takes all” situation

On 06/27/2017, in Amazon, analytics, Apple, Artificial Intelligence/Agents/LLMs/and Related, Asia, Augmented Reality (AR), Australia, Blockchain, bots, Canada, change, changing business models, cloud-based computing / apps / other cloud-related, collaboration, communications, computer science, corporate / business world, data related items, disruption, education, education technology, emerging technologies, engineering, entrepreneurship, Europe, Facebook / Meta Platforms, global / globalization, Google, health, human-computer interaction (HCI), ideas, India, innovation, machine-to-machine communications, Microsoft, music, Natural Language Processing (NLP), platforms, reinvent, robotics, social media, staying relevant, surviving, technology (general), trends, United States, vendors, Virtual Reality (VR) / worlds / learning, voice recognition / voice enabled interfaces, web-based collaboration, workplace, by Daniel Christian

Winner takes all — from by Michael Moe, Luben Pampoulov, Li Jiang, Nick Franco, & Suzee Han

We did a lot of things that seemed crazy at the time. Many of those crazy things now have over a billion users, like Google Maps, YouTube, Chrome, and Android.

— Larry Page, CEO, Alphabet

Excerpt:

An alphabet is a collection of letters that represent language. Alphabet, accordingly, is a collection of companies that represent the many bets Larry Page is making to ensure his platform is built to not only survive, but to thrive in a future defined by accelerating digital disruption. It’s an “Alpha” bet on a diversified platform of assets.

If you look closely, the world’s top technology companies are making similar bets.

Technology in general and the Internet in particular is all about a disproportionate gains to the leader in a category. Accordingly, as technology leaders like Facebook, Alphabet, and Amazon survey the competitive landscape, they have increasingly aimed to develop and acquire emerging technology capabilities across a broad range of complementary categories.

Learning Ecosystems

Will Apple be the (forthcoming) largest AR platform in the world? 3 items re: AR.

Want to learn a new language? With this AR app, just point & tap

Campus Technology Announces 2017 Impact Award Honorees

New app is helping the U of Washington community “experience” a new CS building 18 months before its doors open to students

4 ways augmented reality could change corporate training forever [Samit]

VR & AR make headway in courses on health care, art history, and social work [Roll] Plus…a $200 wireless VR headset from Oculus in 2018?

“ARKit: AR on 195 million iPhones & iPads by year end” plus 3 other items re: AR

Augmented reality ‘is virtually unlimited’ for Apple [Griffith]

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