Where’s the Reality in Augmented Reality? Mark Billinghurst HIT 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

 April 2007 Computer World  Voted 7 th 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 Summary 1960’s – 80’s: Early Experimentation 1980’s – 90’s: Basic Research  Tracking, displays 1995 – 2005: Tools/Applications  Interaction, usability, theory : 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 24 th 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, , 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 ( ) - 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 Name Magic + AR = 116,000 Google Hits MagicBook MagicARMagic Story Cube Magic Music Desk Magic Desk Magic Meeting Magic Bench Magic frameMagic CauldronMagicCube MAGIC MagicCupMagic Window MagicLensMagic Mirror MagicPaddle Magic Board MagicLandMagic Examiner MagicEyeBlack Magic Book Tangible Magic Lens Magic TouchMagic Box Magic Pen MagicBook (2001)

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 Websites –