Where’s the Reality in Augmented Reality?

Mark BillinghurstHIT Lab NZ

University of Canterbury

Falling in Love

1989…

Virtual Reality Was COOL!

Joining the HIT Lab in Seattle

Only $250K for 1500 polygons/sec!

Cheap HMDs

I knew everyone would use VR when: HMDs were cheap (<$300) Computers generate millions of

polys/sec Tracking was inexpensive Good 3D input devices

1990-95

1995-2000

April 2007 Computer World Voted 7th on list of 21 biggest technology flops

- MS Bob Winner

Back to Reality 1999 Fred Brooks – “What’s Real about

Virtual Reality” In 1994 VR barely works In 1999 VR is now really real

3 stages of application maturity: Demonstration Pilot Production

Production VR applications in 1999 Vehicle simulation Entertainment Vehicle design Architectural design Training Medicine

Niche markets with heavy input by domain experts

VR Today

$3-5 Billion VR business (+ > $150 Billion Graphics Industry) Visualization, simulation, gaming, CAD/CAE, multimedia, graphics arts

$3-5 Billion

Lessons learned Don’t over hype Design for users Need to move from Demo to

Production- Profitable niche markets

Follow the money

What’s Real About Augmented Reality?

AR History Summary1960’s – 80’s: Early

Experimentation1980’s – 90’s: Basic

Research Tracking, displays

1995 – 2005: Tools/Applications Interaction, usability, theory

2005 - : Commercial Applications Games, Medical, Industry

Shared Space

Goal create compelling

collaborative AR interface usable by novices

Exhibit content matching card game face to face collaboration physical interaction

We Have The Technology The technology is good enough

Reliable tracking Good displays Widespread hardware platforms- PC + camera, mobile phone

There are research problems to be solved but the technology is good enough for many applications

BBC AR Jam

AR Advertising

Txt message to download AR application (200K) See virtual content popping out of real paper

advert Tested May 2007 by Saatchi and Saatchi

MIT Technology Review March 2007 list of the 10 most

exciting technologies

Current AR Application Areas Production level applications

Education Medicine Broadcast Automotive

PS3 - Eye of Judgement Computer Vision Tracking Card based battle game Collaborative AR October 24th 2007

Excellent reviews Largest deployed AR application

- 24,000 sales since release (in two weeks)- Amazon.com #24 on PS3 games

VR vs. AR Don’t oversell it.. Be Honest

How do we make AR more real?

1. Make Friends

Meeting Seattle 1997 Great working

relationship Complementary

interests

My Friend

2. Share Your Toys

Build and Share Tools Address important problems Make tool available to others Support the community

ARToolKit Provided Tracking, Object based

interaction Tutorials, email, mailing list, tutorials

>55,000 downloads since 2004

ARToolKit in the World

Hundreds of projects Large research community

Tracking, Tracking, Tracking

3. Play With Strangers

Work with others outside the field

Roger Bays

Gavin Bishop

Convergent Creation

Story Telling Workshop

Educational Goals Children build their own AR Book (Free

software) Modeling, spatial concepts, mathematics, story

telling etc..

Final Results

4. Learn from Your Mistakes

Interaction Design Process

Evaluate the Technology Edward Swan (2005) Surveyed major conference/journals (1992-

2004)- Presence, ISMAR, ISWC, IEEE VR

Summary 1104 total papers 266 AR papers 38 AR HCI papers (Interaction) 21 Formal AR user studies

Only 8% of all AR papers have a formal user study

ISMAR 2007 Evaluation

ISMAR 2007 Papers with Formal User Studies 2 from14 full papers - 14% 7 from 22 short papers – 32% 0 from 15 Posters - 0 %

5. Make Magic

Put Magic in Your Project NameMagic + AR = 116,000 Google Hits

MagicBook MagicAR Magic Story Cube Magic Music Desk Magic Desk Magic Meeting Magic Bench Magic frame Magic Cauldron MagicCubeMAGIC MagicCup Magic Window MagicLens Magic Mirror MagicPaddle

Magic Board MagicLand Magic Examiner MagicEye Black Magic Book Tangible Magic

LensMagic Touch Magic Box Magic Pen

MagicBook (2001)

Conclusions

Conclusions

We can make AR more real

Follow Kindergarten Lessons Make friends (collaboration in field) Share your toys (building tools) Talking to strangers (collaboration out

of field) Learn from your mistakes (Evaluation) Make Magic

More Information

• Mark Billinghurst– mark.billinghurst@hitlabnz.org

• Websites– www.hitlabnz.org