Conferences and Exhibitions, GIality

AmbITion Scotland AR Roadshow


Augmented Reality Roadshow

On Thursday May 9, Linknode were invited to present at the AmbITion AR roadshow in the wonderful Macrobert Arts centre at Stirling University (our local).

In the morning we ran two introductory workshops to QR codes – triggers enabling analogue-to-digital context commonly used by smartphones and tablets. QR codes are widely used in advertising, retail and the museums and galleries as a way to go to a website, audio recording or video without typing a URL.  QR codes can be created with web addresses to provide additional supporting material for an individual location or object.  We debunked a few myths along the way, showed some examples of appropriate and poor use, scanned, created and introduced alternative technologies such as NFC.

In the afternoon, Antony Robbins from Museum of London the gave a highly entertaining and insightful talk into the digital journey and evolution the museum has undergone. The has been one of the success stories in AR with appropriate use of technology, content and creative idea all bundled up with style.  Linknode followed up with a (slightly) technical introduction to AR and all the slides and a recording of the session should be available on Get AmbITion website next week.

 

As promised, please see below for some of the replies to the online queries that we didn’t get time to respond to at the end in the Q&A:

Lee: What advancements have you seen in markerless AR without use of geospatial technology if this is something you know of?

CH: The rise of stable and commercial offerings and the investment in these companies by the major graphics chipset and mobile OS and hardware providers shows that this is a another significant sector of the market.
I am assuming by Markerless the reference is to image or object recognition which, though not a traditional fixed-format trigger still depend on prior knowledge and rendering.
What could be really interesting, but at the moment relies on custom hardware, is SLAM (simultaneous localisation and mapping). In SLAM a local 3D model of the environment is built dynamically from an active scanner and hence, with some processing, AR could be dynamically integrated without any prior knowledge.

Big Kev: What is the state of AR in immersive systems i.e CAVE, Domes, HMDs, Tracked Power Walls etc

CH: These systems provide immersive visual experiences either with physical attachments (HMD = Head Mounted Display) or without in terms of projected environments. Whilst a HMD could be termed AR, the others form more of an immersive virtual reality – aka Star Trek Holodeck… but without local physical stimulation. Much investment that then becomes norm comes from the gaming industry and in early 2013 Microsoft leaked a IllumiRoom proof-of-concept that may become part of consumer household gaming.

Damien: How do we find out more about his ‘History Lens’ project – nothing on their site (is it top secret?)

CH: HistoryLens will be launched for expressions of interest at the Museums and Heritage show in London next week. I hijacked my presentation at the last minute today to introduce the ‘call to action’ to the Scottish AmbITion audience. We will have an introduction on the blog next week.

Isabel: Can NFC work with Streetmaps on google?

CH: That’s a bit of an open-ended question Isabel and it would be good to hear what you are thinking here. You could tag a street (in the real world) and link through to Streetview but you would already be there! In the future this will be an increasingly valuable historical record if we can still retain access to the archive, as we can with historical maps now.