GM’s Awesome Augmented Reality Windshield [Driving]

We love technology that makes us feel like we’re living in the future. Case in point: General Motors has been working with several universities to develop a working next-generation heads-up display that turns an ordinary windshield into an augmented reality information dashboard.
Such a system can improve safety and advance knowledge behind the wheel, visually identifying important objects in physical space like road signs and the edges of the road you’re on in conditions of poor visibility. It can even bring GPS functions right into the dashboard by outlining the exact building you’re going to. Check out a demo of the system in action below.
The HUD windshield uses night vision, navigation and camera-based sensors to gather data relevant to your surroundings as you drive, and ultraviolet lasers project corresponding images onto the windshield surface. GM says to look for this system being incorporated into its vehicles in the near future.
Would you be excited to have an AR windshield in your next car?





Tags: AR, Augmented Reality, cars, GM, gps, technology, transportation
[Mashable]

Parrot AR.Drone turns your living room into a virtual battlefield [AR]

Last time we checked in with Parrot's AR.Drone quadricopter, we were told that game developers would be putting together some games to play with the drone. Parrot recently showed off what those games look like.


You've got three major flavors to choose from when it comes to playing with the AR.Drone: single player, dual mode and against a robot. The single player mode sees the drone hovering in the middle of the room while you dogfight with virtual opponents. With an attachment atop the AR.Drone, you can compete against other players using virtual rockets and guns. Finally, the robot mode has you going up against a simulated robotic foe, which in real life just looks like a board with circles printed on it.

Most of the augmented reality games play out in such a way that you're trying to keep your drone aimed at a target long enough to fire, while dodging incoming fire and avoiding lock-ons. It's all visible in the video that's streamed to your iPhone-turned-controller.

The Parrot AR.Drone doesn't have a release date or price, yet, but you can check it out in the video down below.


[DVICE via Joystiq]

Put on Your Google Goggles and Visually Search the World [Google]

Google’s breaking news left and right today. Of course the big news is that real-time search is live, but the release of Google Goggles can’t be overlooked. The brand-new addition to Google Labs is an experimental application for Android devices that supports visual search.

How does it work? Just open the app, snap a photo and voilà: Google will process the image and return search results. The photo search functionality eliminates the need to type or say anything on your mobile device, and it adds context to your real-world surroundings.

While the technology is pretty remarkable, Google admits that it is still in its infancy. So while some image searches work brilliantly — think photos of books, business cards, artwork, places, logos and landmarks — don’t be too disappointed if your image searches for food, animals, plants and cars are less than stellar.

Still, the application should prove useful, and we hope to see versions of it made available for other smartphone users as well. For now, though, iPhone users can turn to a number of different augmented reality applications for camera-enabled search functionality.

Watch the video below for a demonstration of Google Goggles.




[Mashable]

Mobilizy Proposes Open AR Markup Language

It’s been a big day for Augmented Reality news. On the heels of the announcement of Layar’s support for 3D objects, Mobilizy, maker of Wikitude World Browser, announced that it’s proposing an open Augmented Reality markup language (ARML).
ARML would be based on KML and “enriched with custom extensions.”

The basic idea behind this specification is that data that is prepared using this specification can be viewed on augmented reality browsers like Wikitude but also in Google Earth. Augmented reality browsers can include an open URL dialog where the user can enter an URL pointing to a valid ARML document. For instance such a document can contain all affiliates of a company. People can easily bookmark those URLs.

ReadWriteWeb notes that “such a step would remove one of the five barriers to AR that we recently wrote about: interoperability. Cross-platform, open development standards would allow users more ways to see more AR content. … It will also accelerate innovation and allow for more, better, and less expensive AR apps.”
This video from Mobilizy sums it up to the tune of a “Cinemax: After Dark” soundtrack:

[AndroidGuys]

Layar Brings Semi-Augmented Reality to Your Android Phone [Downloads]

Android: 'Augmented Reality' is a buzz phrase gaining a lot of notice lately. Free Android app Layar, one of the first full-featured AR apps for Android, layers helpful, location-specific data on top of whatever you're looking at through your device's camera.
In a true-to-form augmented reality app, a phone's camera would be used to provide a live video stream, and the application would analyze objects in that stream and interact with them in some way. This video demonstrates what the future will likely hold for motion-sensitive, GPS-enabled, decent-camera-toting phones—with zombies:



Until phones catch up to developers' ambitions, we have half-breed apps like Layar that pull in geographic data from your phone's GPS location, check it against web databases, and then show the locations of nearby subway stations, restaurants, and more overlaid on the image of your surroundings from your phone's camera. Android phones allow apps to access the video stream for overlays, while the iPhone 3GS picked up that ability with the 3.1 firmware update, as ReadWriteWeb details. Here's how Layar's developers demonstrate the app in their native Amsterdam:



For a real-world, smaller-city test, I grabbed a T-Mobile G1 and headed to Buffalo's Elmwood Avenue commercial strip, with a side venture to Main Street, to see what Layar could show me. The app has a single view and function that pulls in your camera's video stream, but you can switch up what 'layer' you see over it on the fly. The layers, listed at Layar's web site, come from web services with big geographic data piles, like Wikipedia, review site Yelp, real estate finder Trulia, and sites that mash up social apps like Flickr and Twitter. Yelp and Flickr (pulled in as 'FlickAR' in this app) are, as you might imagine, the most densely packed of the apps I tried. You normally turn your camera, or yourself, to get thumbnail data on any 'blips' that come up in Layar. When you come up with clusters of results in layers like Yelp, though, you'll end up switching to the less impressive list view, because trying to pinpoint individual finds will have passersby wondering why it looks like you're trying to rotate the world with your phone.

I didn't get any results for local tweets or Trulia real estate findings, but an architectural society layer and Wikipedia yielded a few fun surprises. If you were new in a city and looking for something to check out, Layar might well be worth the time (and battery drain) to check out. Who wouldn't want to check out the spot where President William McKinley was shot in Buffalo, or the seriously creepy spires of the H.R. Richardson 'State Lunatic Asylum'? Layar is neat stuff, and will probably get better as more developers buy into it.

Layar is a free download for Android phones only. If you've used the app for something useful, fun, or something in-between, tell us about it, and post pictures, in the comments.