News on Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, Mixed Reality, UX/UI Designer, Internet of Things, Artificial intelligence, Quantum Computing, continually updated from thousands of sources around the net.
Apple managed to instantly raise the excitement levels of the developers in attendance at this year’s Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with the introduction of the wonderful ARKit framework.
What we didn’t plan for on the back of that was the slew of prototypes and app ideas utilizing ARKit that would ultimately end up exciting device owners. Now, as ARKit approaches the mainstream, we’re seeing a set of highly polished creations, including one called MeasureKit by developer Rinat Khanov.
A number of creative developers had the same train of thought when ARKit was first announced. In addition to the usual gaming implementations, we have already seen some developers showing just how performant and accurate ARKit will be when used for measuring purposes.
Khanov has taken things a few steps further with MeasureKit by ensuring that his app best uses ARKit and the real world to be able to offer a variety of different ways to measure using nothing more than the device and a little bit of user interaction.
The power of this tool comes from the fact that it offers a very simple mechanism to measure different things in different situations. And all of this is offered to the user with a very small learning curve, making it essentially accessible to anyone who owns an iOS 11-powered iPhone and is in need of having something measured.
From a feature perspective, users can expect to find a trajectory mode, the ability to measure distance from a specific point of reference, as well as being able to measure angles, height of individuals, and even build cubes that are placed into the real world.
This is definitely by far one of the most fun and innovative ways to use ARKit, but which is also applicable to most users in the real world. When it goes live on the App Store, presumably in the coming weeks, it’s almost a given that it will have an instant user-base.
It’s likely that MeasureKit will be joined on the iOS App Store by an impressive range of ARKit-powered apps, including zombie games, portal-based experiences that look to transport people to other worlds, and even official offerings by multinational retailers and companies like IKEA.
Until the Apple product named ARKit hits the market, Hola, an app developed by a VR/AR company called 8i, will hog the limelight.
Holograms are three-dimensional objects, either people or animals which can be downloaded and placed to the real world. Since the news of Apple incorporating Augmented Reality (AR) to mobile operating system started doing the rounds, excitement levels have gone up. Until the Apple product named ARKit hits the market, Hola, an app developed by a VR/AR company called 8i, will hog the limelight. Hola helps the user place ‘holograms’ in their world.
Holograms are three-dimensional objects, either people or animals which can be downloaded and placed to the real world. But when you move around, it need not come with you.
The Verge writes about the flipside: “The objects can’t interact with the world you’re placing them into. The app isn’t recognising surfaces or mapping the world, it’s just remembering generally where you placed the object so that if you turn away or move around, the hologram stays relatively put. This is fine if you’re placing things in an open area.”
ARKit is defined as the “framework that allows you to easily create unparalleled augmented reality experiences for iPhone and iPad.” It was mentioned along with the announcement of iOS 11 at WWDC.
Non passa praticamente giorno senza qualche indiscrezione sui futuri piani di Apple. Stando a fonti vicine all'azienda di Cupertino, la Mela avrebbe ingaggiato 1.000 ingegneri che in Israele si starebbero dedicando a un progetto incentrato sulla realtà aumentata, da tempo "chiodo fisso" di Tim Cook.
Apple potrebbe riuscire a integrare la tecnologia al momento in fase di sviluppo già nel prossimo iPhone che dovrebbe debuttare in autunno.
Le voci di corridoio paiono in linea con quanto rivelato la scorsa settimana dagli analisti di KGI Securities ovvero che il futuro iPhone sarà dotato di una fotocamera di nuova generazione con sensore all'infrarosso (IR), capace di raccogliere informazioni sullo spazio circostante, dati utilizzabili nelle applicazioni per la realtà aumentata.
D'altra parte anche lo stesso CEO di Apple, appena il mese scorso, aveva rilasciato alcune dichiarazioni che hanno fatto pensare all'imminente arrivo sul mercato di una tecnologia per la realtà aumentata: Tim Cook, Apple sta lavorando sulla realtà aumentata. Un nuovo prodotto in arrivo?
Tutti hanno pensato a un nuovo prodotto ma, in realtà, almeno inizialmente, potrebbe trattarsi di una funzionalità che andrà ad arricchire le potenzialità dei dispositivi di casa Apple, iPhone in primis. In futuro, però, la stessa tecnologia potrebbe debuttare negli iGlass, occhiali per la realtà aumentata con il logo della Mela.
Oggi torniamo a parlare dei progetti futuri dell’azienda di Cupertino, di cui vi avevamo già offerto un’anticipazione, riportandovi le parole dette dal CEO Tim Cook durante un’intervista che lo stesso ha rilasciato al Washington Post: al centro dello sviluppo dei prodotti futuri, il colosso statunitense ha reso noto di aver scelto di puntare in particolar modo sulle tecnologie della realtà aumentata e dell’intelligenza artificiale.
Del resto, anche durante la presentazione dei risultati trimestrali, Cook aveva sottolineato come l’AR potesse diventare una vera e propria risorsa per il futuro del comparto hi tech, come testimoniato del resto dalla popolarità dell’app di Pokemon Go, vero e proprio trionfo tecnologico dell’estate 2016, che potrebbe fare il suo ingresso nei prossimi device mobile della casa di Cupertino, anche grazie alle acquisizioni di diverse società.
Del resto, Apple nel frattempo ha depositato diverse richieste per il brevetto di tecnologie correlate al mondo della realtà aumentata, ciò che fa presuppore che l’azienda di Tim Cook pensi già allo sviluppo di device con esperienza utente AR. Per quanto riguarda l’intelligenza artificiale, Cupertino potrebbe introdurre nei suoi device (in particolare smartphone) strumenti più potenti come assistenti personali più evoluti.
Non molti dettagli vengono rivelati sulle intenzioni di Cupertino, ma l’indiscrezione proverrebbe da fonti credibili. Innanzitutto, Apple vorrebbe ben differenziare l’ambito della realtà virtuale da quella aumentata, concentrandosi unicamente sulla seconda. Non verrà quindi prodotto un device in competizione con Oculus Rift e affini, bensì uno strumento che permetta all’utente di ottenere informazioni aggiuntive rispetto all’ambiente in cui è normalmente immerso.
Mirko Compagno's insight:
Il gruppo di ingegneri scelto da Cupertino starebbe vagliando le possibilità ancora non testate della realtà aumentata, per raggiungere delle funzioni utili nel quotidiano e, fatto non da poco, un’interfaccia che non sia di distrazione o fastidiosa per l’utente. Un proposito che potrebbe riflettersi anche su design ed estetica, con un dispositivo indossabile che sia alla moda e “socialmente accettabile”.
È difficile prevedere quando un simile proposito tecnologico verrà presentato al pubblico, sempre che l’azienda californiana opti davvero per un lancio. Al momento l’intero progetto si troverebbe ancora nelle prime fasi di sviluppo, quindi potrebbero passare anche diversi anni prima che possa essere reso disponibile.
Apple sta lavorando a un paio di occhiali per realtà aumentata e l’iPhone potrebbe fungere da controller. È quanto si apprende da un nuovo brevetto che descrive un sistema capace di combinare i due dispositivi per garantire una migliore fusione tra Realtà Aumentata e mondo reale.
Nello specifico questi occhiali smart, dotati di schermo semi-trasparente, sarebbero capaci di posizionare con precisione elementi tridimensionali nel mondo circostante, sfruttando sensori e GPS per calcolare l’esatta posizione dell’utente. Nell’esempio documentato viene mostrata l’evoluzione di un’applicazione per le Mappe, che segna percorsi e punti di interesse nell’ambiente circostante.
Tale sistema sarebbe un’alternativa a quanto abbiamo in parte già visto da uno dei recenti video di applicazioni sviluppate con ARKit, dove l’utente semplicemente inquadrava il mondo circostante con l’iPhone per vedere le indicazioni stradali su muri e strade attraverso la fotocamera del dispositivo.
Qui però l’iPhone avrebbe un altro ruolo, quello di controller per interagire con il software: occhiali come questi infatti non potrebbero offrire un’interazione touch come quella a cui siamo abituati con lo schermo degli smartphone. Ecco che quindi il sistema sarebbe in grado di riconoscere la posizione del dito dell’utente sullo schermo, virtualizzando probabilmente un cursore sul display degli occhiali per permettere all’utente di effettuare click e selezioni.
Continuando sull’esempio evidenziato dal brevetto, i cui dettagli sono stati resi noti dal sito AppleInsider, punti di riferimento, edifici noti e altri oggetti tipici sono comunemente denominati POI (“Point Of Interest”) nelle applicazioni di mapping, inclusa l’app Mappe di Apple stessa.
La Casa di Cupertino integra già POI per alcune funzionalità di ricerca in Mappe; sono usati, ad esempio per cercare ristoranti e stazioni di servizio. La proprietà intellettuale per la quale Apple ha chiesto il brevetto, va oltre i punti di interesse visualizzabili su una mappa in due dimensioni, prevedendo modalità utilizzabili nell’ambito della Realtà Aumentata.
Nello specifico è previsto quando mostrare POI nelle vicinanze, visualizzando quali rilevanti o in qualche modo vicini alla vista nel mondo reale. Sfruttando dati relativi a latitudine, longitudine e altitudine, il sistema può elaborare l’ubicazione rispetto ai POI target visualizzando dettagli sullo schermo.
Dopo avere determinato la posizione dei POI, indicazioni grafiche con annotazioni interattive sono sovrapposte sull’immagine catturata. I sensori, inclusi quelli di profondità di future fotocamere, possono essere sfruttati per collocare marcatori in punti ben determinati. Gli indicatori sono in qualche modo ancorati alle rispettive controparti presenti nel mondo reale. Se, ad esempio, l’utente comincia a spostarsi a sinistra, gli edifici mostrati sullo schermo si spostano di conseguenza, così come i punti di interesse mostrati sul display, come se fossero “incollati” alle varie posizioni.
Nel brevetto si mostrano vari modi per interagire con i POI, tenendo ad esempio anche del modo in cui l’utente ha l’iPhone in mano (in verticale o in orizzontale). Il brevetto di Apple è un’estensione di un brevetto che era stato registrato dalla tedesca Metaio, azienda specializzata in Realtà Aumentata acquisita da Cupertino nel 2015.
Israele: 1000 ingegneri sviluppano realtà aumentata per il nuovo iPhone. Apple Israel, secondo indiscrezioni, sta lavorando allo sviluppo di una nuova tecnologia della realtà aumentata per il prossimo iPhone.
Secondo alcune fonti del settore, la società avrebbe a disposizione più di 1.000 ingegneri che stanno lavorando duramente a questo progetto, legato alla realtà aumentata.
La realtà aumentata (AR) permette agli utenti di interagire con l’ambiente e le persone intorno (basti pensare al successo di Pokemon Go). Apple ha acquisito diverse aziende israeliane che potrebbero essere coinvolte nel progetto, tra cui:
PrimeSense: azienda specializzata nello sviluppo di hardware e software in grado di rilevare il movimento in 3 dimensioni; RealFace: azienda che ha sviluppato un software di riconoscimento facciale che offre agli utenti un accesso biometrico intelligente. In questo modo le password utilizzate per accedere a dispositivi mobili o PC saranno superflue.
Indiscrezioni anonime recenti hanno affermato che vi sono numerosi ricercatori israeliani che stanno segretamente sviluppando il nuovo iPhone8 presso gli uffici Apple a Herzliya.
Queste le parole di Tim Cook, CEO di Apple:
"Apple Israel è il secondo più grande ufficio di ricerca e sviluppo della società in tutto il mondo."
For the First time we take our camera rig outside and shoot what our optics can do in daytime conditions. No tricks or post effects were used in this video and it was shot with a iPhone 6.
Apple is integrating augmented reality technology into the iPhone’s camera app, a person familiar with the matter told Business Insider. The effort, which involves teams from several acquired startups, reflects Apple’s near-term desire to put augmented reality technology into consumers' hands even as it develops special glasses that could eventually change the way people perceive their surroundings.
Apple also recently hired an expert in head-mounted displays, in the latest sign of its longer-term glasses initiative. Augmented reality is an exploding field in technology in which digital objects are superimposed onto the real world. A view of a city street for instance can be enriched with a map for directions, a coupon for a nearby store or an animated character in a video game.
The ultimate goal is a pair of smart glasses, and companies including Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Apple and Snapchat are all actively developing or exploring such a product. But in the near-term most popular augmented reality applications will take place on a smartphone, as was the case with this summer’s smash hit Pokemon Go app. Point and recognize By adding AR technology into the iPhone’s camera software, Apple wants consumers to be able to point the phone at a real-world object and have it be recognized, according to the person familiar with the matter.
That would require creating or licensing a database of 3D objects. Another early feature for Apple's AR integration into the camera app could be to recognize and manipulate people's faces. Apple integrated facial recognition technology into the photos app in the most recent version of its iOS software, and purchased FaceShift, a company with similar technology in 2015. Apple has acquired several AR and virtual reality technology companies in recent years including Metaio, in February 2014 and Flyby Media in January 2016.
The employees from both groups are now working in Apple’s camera group. Eventually, the person said, after the AR features are built into the iPhone camera app, Apple will release the technology behind them as an SDK for app developers, like it did with its Touch ID fingerprint sensor. At that point, Apple will become a competitor to companies like Vuforia and Blippar. Apple declined to comment. Several leaders in the augmented reality space have previously said they expect Apple to integrate AR into the next version of iOS.
Apple is also working on a pair of skinny, stylish smart glasses that pairs to an iPhone to display contextual information, Bloomberg reported on Monday and sources have told Business Insider. However, the timeline for the device is far into the future — 2018 or later, according to the Bloomberg report.
But there are some signs that the project has moved out of the exploration labs and into a more advanced stage in which Apple is exploring production. John Border, who lists his title as "senior optics manufacturing exploration engineer," joined Apple in September, according to his LinkedIn profile. Border's bio describes him as a "subject matter expert in the fields of head-worn displays, plastic optics manufacturing, camera systems and image sensors."
Before joining Apple, he was chief engineer at Osterhout Design Group, a small 50-person company based in San Francisco. ODG is notable as one of the few companies currently demoing a fully functional pair of smart glasses. ODG sells a device called the R-7 Smartglasses that uses "3D stereoscopic ultra-transparent see-thru HD displays" to superimpose computer graphics into the real world.
Apple has hired one of the top US researchers in virtual reality, as it looks to catch up to Facebook, Alphabet, Microsoft and Samsung in what many see as the next big shift in computing platforms. Doug Bowman recently joined Apple after going on sabbatical from his post as computer science professor at Virginia Tech, where he had been director of its centre for human-computer interaction for around five years.
Mirko Compagno's insight:
According to his academic profile, Mr Bowman focused his research on “three-dimensional user interface design and the benefits of immersion in virtual environments”.
His experience spans both fully immersive VR, as used in Facebook’s Oculus Rift and HTC’s Vive headsets, as well as augmented reality, where transparent visors such as Microsoft’s Hololens, Google Glass and secretive start-up Magic Leap mingle digital images with the real world still visible.
Apple has filed patents for smartphone-based VR headsets and made several acquisitions that seem to point to a growing interest in the technology, including emotion-recognition software Emotient, which emerged earlier this month, as well as Metaio and Faceshift last year. While no product has yet emerged from those deals, people in the industry say that Apple has shown growing interest in VR research over the past six months. Its latest hire is the strongest sign yet of the iPhone maker’s intent, which analysts speculate could range from building a headset of its own to new kinds of automotive controls and displays.
Apple declined to comment. Mr Bowman is highly regarded by his peers in academia and has won several industry prizes for his work in VR and 3D interfaces in the last few years.
In November, he and a Virginia Tech colleague were also among the first recipients of a $100,000 research grant from Microsoft for using its Hololens headset, for a study on “collaborative analysis of large-scale mixed reality data”. He has also consulted for Walt Disney’s Imagineering unit, which develops its theme parks and resorts. While relatively few headsets are in widespread use today, ahead of the launch of Oculus Rift, PlayStation VR and HTC Vive in the next few months, tech companies are already jostling for position in a market that Goldman Sachs predicts could be worth $80bn by 2025. Unlike Google, Samsung and Oculus, who have been very public about their VR works-in-progress, Apple’s secrecy means it is unclear how far along any product development in this area might be.
Google recently appointed Clay Bavor, former head of its apps unit, as vice-president of virtual reality, as it steps up its investment in smartphone-based VR products such as Cardboard.
“We believe VR/AR has the potential to spawn a multibillion-dollar industry, and possibly be as game changing as the advent of the PC,” Goldman analysts wrote in a note to clients last week. If VR headsets saw “accelerated uptake”, sales of $110bn by 2025 would outstrip television sets, tablets and desktop PCs, Goldman added.
The analysts said that they did expect Apple to participate in the market, despite the lack of public initiatives from the company. “As the use cases of VR/AR are still in very early stages of development, we suspect that Apple is trying to gain a greater understanding of how consumers want to interact with the technology and the associated challenges before making its first move,” Goldman said.
Ben Wood, analyst at CCS Insight, said it was “unthinkable” that Apple has not been “quietly exploring this area” given the “red hot” technology and its broad application, from entertainment to education and travel.
According to a pair of patent applications published on Thursday, Apple is investigating augmented reality systems for iOS capable of providing users with enhanced virtual overlays of their surroundings, including an "X-ray vision" mode that peels away walls.
Mirko Compagno's insight:
Apple filed two applications with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, titled "Federated mobile device positioning" and "Registration between actual mobile device position and environmental model," both describing an advanced augmented reality solution that harnesses an iPhone's camera, onboard sensors and communications suite to offer a real-time world view overlaid with rich location data.
The system first uses GPS, Wi-Fi signal strength, sensor data or other information to determine a user's location. From there, the app downloads a three-dimensional model of the surrounding area, complete with wireframes and image data for nearby buildings and points of interest. Corresponding that digital representation with the real world is a difficult task with sensors alone, however.
To accurately place the model, Apple proposes the virtual frame be overlaid atop live video fed by an iPhone's camera. Users can align the 3D asset with the live feed by manipulating it onscreen through pinch-to-zoom, tap-and-drag and other gestures, providing a level of accuracy not possible through machine reckoning alone.
Alternatively, users can issue audible commands like "move left" and "move right" to match up the images. Wireframe can be "locked in" when a point or points are correctly aligned, thus calibrating the augmented view.
In yet another embodiment, the user can interact directly with the wire model by placing their hand into the live view area and "grabbing" parts of the virtual image, repositioning them with a special set of gestures. This third method requires object recognition technology to determine when and how a user's hand is interacting with the environment directly in front of the camera.
To get content containing either thought or leadership enter:
To get content containing both thought and leadership enter:
To get content containing the expression thought leadership enter:
You can enter several keywords and you can refine them whenever you want. Our suggestion engine uses more signals but entering a few keywords here will rapidly give you great content to curate.
Your new post is loading...
