prosthetic knowledge

Minecraft Reality 

iOS Augmented Reality app lets you place Minecraft creations into the real world - video embedded below:

Minecraft Reality lets you combine Minecraft worlds with the real world! Using advanced computer vision, Minecraft Reality maps and tracks the world around you using the camera, and allows you to place Minecraft worlds in reality, and even save them in a specific location for others to look at. You can also upload your own Minecraft worlds at http://minecraftreality.com and place these in reality.

Minecraft Reality lets you:

- View Minecraft worlds tied to reality using advanced computer vision and augmented reality
- Find Minecraft worlds that others have placed in locations nearby
- Upload your own Minecraft worlds at http://minecraftreality.com
- Share screenshots of Minecraft worlds in reality to Facebook and Twitter

Powered by PointCloud SDK (http://pointcloud.io) which lets you map and track 3D spaces using SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping).

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ARart by Kei Shiratori

Augmented Reality project brings classic art to life in charming ways (as well as book illustrations and musical records - video embedded below:

ARART from kei shiratori on Vimeo.

ARART is an application that breathes life into objects. When overlaying ARART onto a well-known masterpiece, a new story will unfold, as if time trapped inside the painting had been stirred alive.
The system of ARART detects the picture which analyzed the image and was registered beforehand at the same time it displays the image of a back camera on a screen as it is.
And display it that a picture of the reality world transforms it by putting a different image on top of one another depending on the image which a system detected.
The pictures to detect are natural drawings, such as not a mark like QR Code but a photograph, and an illustration.
Enjoy a whole new experience by overlaying ARART onto various objects that make up this world.

I thought I encountered this piece independently, but no, Creative Applications found it first, because, well, they’re brilliant … and they have a few more details:

The app was created using Vuforia Augmented Reality SDK and is available from the AppStore for free.

In theory, then, you could try this app out on reproductions you may have.

You can check out the project’s site here (in both English and Japanese) - also, Kei has a Tumblr blog here

[Also, I know designboom created a gif to accompany their entry on this work, pretty much identical to the top one I have made here. No intention of ripping them off, but the guy who posted it {rodrigo db} imitated my post on the Hyper-Matrix post - we’re even]

Levelhead by Julian Oliver 

Interesting 3D augmented reality game from 2008, a maze inside a cube where you guide a person around - video embedded below:

levelHead v1.0, 3 cube speed-run (spoiler!) from Julian Oliver on Vimeo.

levelHead is a spatial memory game by Julian Oliver, developed at the end of 2007, beginning 2008.

levelHead uses a hand-held solid-plastic cube as its only interface. On-screen it appears each face of the cube contains a little room, each of which are logically connected by doors.

In one of these rooms is a character. By tilting the cube the player directs this character from room to room in an effort to find the exit.

Some doors lead nowhere and will send the character back to the room they started in, a trick designed to challenge the player’s spatial memory. Which doors belong to which rooms?

There are three cubes (levels) in total, each of which are connected by a single door. Players have the goal of moving the character from room to room, cube to cube in an attempt to find the final exit door of all three cubes. If this door is found the character will appear to leave the cube, walk across the table surface and vanish…

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Augmented Reality Alien Chestburster T-Shirt 

… It’s finally happened …

Put together by FingerFunk, you can buy a T-shirt with the marker, and download a free app on iOS and Android to watch the spectacle - video demonstration embedded below:

More info here

Augmented Reality Cooking Simulator 

Tokyo institute of Technology project aims to teach how to cook the perfect steak with projection onto real frying pan and virtual utensils - via DigInfo (video embedded below):

This cooking simulator, being developed by a research group at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, features a force feedback fry pan and spatula to accurately recreate the sense of cooking.

This simulator calculates the heat transfer from the pan to the meat or vegetables that are being cooked, and displays the visible changes caused by heating. The fry pan interface allows for three dimensional input, and as well as moving the fry pan to aid the cooking process, the simulator can feed back the weight of ingredients combined with the tactile feeling of the ingredients cooking.

“When you move the frying pan, the actual movement is input, and you can feel the ingredients through the pan. Also, the upper part of the system is a screen. When you look into the pan, you can see what’s in it through a half-mirror. So this simulator lets you experience looking into the frying pan while you hold it.”

More at DigInfo here

Camera to PC Spatial 3D Data Method From Photos 

Project in early stages from Tokyo to quickly digitally reproduce 3D objects from photographs. What differs this to Autodesk 123 Catch is the photographic information is transferred locally to PC over Eye-Fi card as opposed to the cloud. From DigInfo News:

A research group at Tokyo Institute of Technology is developing a system that quickly creates 3D spacial data from photos taken with a digital camera.

“We take pictures using an ordinary digital camera. This camera has an Eye-Fi card, which sends the pictures to a PC wirelessly. This system uses the received pictures to rapidly create a 3D model. A feature of this system is that it doesn’t use any information other than the pictures to construct the 3D data.”

“Other people are researching similar systems. What we’re specializing in is the online aspect. In other words, what’s interesting is, you see the results as soon as you’ve taken the pictures. For example, when aerial photos are processed after saving them, if you need to take more pictures, you have to go out again. But with our system, you can see on the spot whether 3D measurement was successful, so if you don’t have enough pictures, you can just take some more.”

This system uses SfM, or Structure from Motion, which estimates the 3D shape and camera position from several pictures of the same scene. To reproduce spatial position data, it repeatedly identifies and matches characteristic points between two pictures.

More information (including a demonstration video) can be found at DigInfo News here

(PS - DigInfo has been great recently - worth checking regularly)

Layar Creator 

Layar release a simplified augmented reality editing service to bring digital connectivity to print media.

Layar, the world’s leading mobile augmented reality (AR) provider, today announced the launch of the Layar Creator, a self-service web application for activating print pages with digital content. By simplifying and demystifying previously complex AR technology, the Layar Creator makes it quick and easy to bring once static pages to life with videos, links and “Buy” buttons that readers can view with their smartphone.

In a matter of seconds, anyone can upload images or PDFs, drag-and-drop any of a number of digital buttons onto the pages and publish them on the Layar platform. When readers view activated pages with the Layar app, these buttons appear on top of the page, enabling deeper engagement and direct commercial opportunities as the printed page becomes a point-of-sale.

You can find out more about the service here

It is worth noting that, despite the obvious focus on mainstream high-circulation magazines, there is a Pro-Publishing model as well as an Ad-Supported one which could lead to some creativity to the lower circulation models, such as zines, and possibility other areas such as stickers, paintings, street art etc …

I got in contact via Twitter about a couple of things - first, to have AR video, you’ll need a high-end mobile to have it work properly within the camera view (otherwise it will open in a separate window), iPhone 4(S) or dual-core Android at the minimum. Secondly, it doesn’t support animated GIFs (which would have been great), although you could position a link button to a GIF file.

Piksel Bacteria 

iOS Augmented Reality game where red pixel bacteria feed on edges, and is based on a scientific discovery from playing an Atari game:

PikselBacteria is an augmented reality game for iPhone/iPad. It focuses on the bacterium pikselum. The bacterium was discovered in 1985 in the USSR by the scientist Lars Rodkov. He first thought he found a glitch in a bootleg of river raid (an atari 2600 game). But then he discovered, that it was a bacterium living in displays. PikselBacteria are feeding on pixel-edges. They are very rare. Therefore Rodkov developed an attractor to approach and cultivate these bacteria.

Based on his research, And-or developed a game in which you may grow these short-lived bacteria with your camera.

You breed the short-lived bacteria with your camera. Give them food by taking them to an edge and start moving the camera along this edge - and the bacteria will breed instantly and take you to the edge.

Gain research points in growing the bacteria as long as you can! Your highscore shows that you are an avid researcher and observer. Press the icon in the lower right corner of the display and send a picture of the sighted bacteria to the website! Or store it in your photo album for proof.

More information, and links to download the free game, can be found on the project’s website here

Noog 

NOOG is a free online collector’s album for virtual 3D objects, viewable through your webcam with an AR marker. See the video below:

There are 256 items in the gallery to collect, although half of them are customizable, so there is an opportunity to create your own.

The objects can also be embedded into a webpage, like the one below:

Sign up and start collecting at NOOG here

Art for After Hours

Project that aims bring more to urban mural chalk art experiences by incorporating Augmented Reality. Above are photos from a recent project in Mumbai.

Artists  Anthony Cappetto and Shawn McCann from Art for After Hours designed and executed an intergrated project using large outdoor 3D street murals and 3D chalk art with animated augmented reality (AR) for the Techfest 2012 event in Mumbai, India, drawing over 80,000 attendees in a three day time frame from January 6th through January 8th, 2012.

This was the first time that 3D street painting using animated augmented reality had ever been brought to India and we were very happy to share our art with the huge amounts of students eager to see the blending of traditional art and emerging technologies.

More about the project can be found here

How Augmented Reality Is Going Viral in the Art World, From the Omi Sculpture Park to a 9/11 Memorial by ArtInfo

Above: “Unraveled” created by the architect Daniel Libeskind

The aesthetic potential of such applications is obvious, and as a medium for art, AR has been gaining in mainstream appeal as ever more art-lovers adopt the appropriate technology. From public art installations to advertising initiatives, AR is everywhere. Few AR artworks have met with critical acclaim — but that may be changing with the latest generation of virtual art.

More here