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Sep 25
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Geo-located Augmented Reality

By ar media, Augmented Reality, Front Page One Comment

With the latest version of Augmented Reality Player for iOS v1.2.0 users can now choose geo-location as a visualization option for their projects. The Geo-location feature allows to use GPS coordinates to locate a 3D model/animation on the earth’s surface. The software then tracks the 3D model coordinates in the real space using a suitable sensor fusion technique. This makes it possible to display virtual models in the real world without any marker:

 
Besides support for geolocated 3D models and animations, now the Player also supports skinning and morphing animations. In addition, users can freely move virtual models in the real environment using an intuitive interface.
The Geo-localization feature extends the spectrum of visualization possibilities of the ARplugin in many application domains, including architecture, engineering and cultural heritage.
Its an interesting development and we would be keen to know the level of accuracy achieved, for rural sites and to determine a rough idea of a developments impact on a view it seems to be useful.
The iOS ARplayer v1.2.0 is available for iPad and iPhone. It can be freely downloaded from Apple’s App Store and it works in association with the latest update of ARmedia Plugin Professional v2.2. Supported products include Trimble SketchUp, Autodesk Maya and 3ds Max, Maxon Cinema4D and Nemetschek Vectorworks.
You can download the iOS ARplayer now directly from Apple’s App Store:
http://itunes.apple.com/app/armedia-player/id502524441
For more information see: http://www.inglobetechnologies.com/iosplayer

Sep 07
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An American Junction: A Tiltshift Timelapse

By Front Page, Tilt-shift Miniature, timelapse cities, Ubicomp2012 One Comment

Below is a tiltshift timelapse of a junction in Pittsburgh, running at over 9 minutes at 30 frames per second with one photograph captured every second it was produced using the IPad 3 and Miniatures:

 
Miniatures adds a tiltshift effect to each frame, making creating HD timelapses amazingly easy to capture, we simply set the iPad up against a window and left it running while we went back to our conference here at Ubicomp2012.
Minatures Pro is 4.99 via the Apple Store, with a variety of options, including a neat blur feature between frames, its well worth a look.

Sep 05
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Personal Robots on the Horizon: The Robot Operating System

By Slider, Ubicomp2012 No Comments

We are over in Pittsburgh for Ubicomp 2012, kicking off the 5 day conference is Steve Cousins, President and CEO of Willow Garage, a robotics company that acts a a catalyst to create a new industry in personal robotics by creating open source software and state-of-the-art robot hardware.
Robots are not close to being ubiquitous, but we are getting closer to a day when personal robots will be commonplace. Robotic technologies, with either sensing or actuation, are rapidly being adopted as advances in computation allow us to do more with them. Robots are following a path that parallels that of computing. Mainframe computers and industrial robot arms are both large, expensive devices that operate behind locked doors on behalf of an organization. Like personal computers, personal robots are used directly by individuals to increase their effectiveness in whatever they do.
Steve notes that Personal Robotics is a new industry powered by open source software with off the shelf components.
The Person Robot 1 in 2007 provided a first glimpse of home personal robots:

 
Moving on to the Person Robot 2 was introduced in 2010, small scale and high cost but 40 of the units are currently in use in a range of applications, the progress from 1-2 points to the developments most notably version 2 is autonomous:
 
The main issue is software rather than hardware, core to this is the development of a Robot Operating System (ROS). Below is the Turtlebot, basically a Roomba linked to a Kinect and running ROS, we really like this one:
 
As Steve notes these developments prompt thoughts of the forthcoming film Robot and Frank:
 
In the near future being able to ‘manipulate the world’ from a distance – ie the PR1 will be more common, cost is still an issue but smaller off the shelf hardware, combined with ROS and open source is bringing personal robots into the foreseeable tech horizon.

Aug 10
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Live London Dashboard now with realtime Olympic tweet counter

By Front Page No Comments

Ollie here in CASA has just posted a new temporary panel on the London CityDashboard which shows Twitter activity at the London 2012 venues. The panel is using data from new Twitter collector tools in the Big Data Toolkit, developed by  Steven James Gray, again CASA, as part of his PhD.

As Ollie notes ‘for each venue, the collectors count the number of Tweets in the last hour that have latitude/longitude information stamped on them, that are located within an area radiating around the centre of each stadium or arena. Its worth noting that this excludes the majority of relevant tweets, as most mobile Twitter applications don’t include this information by default’, you have to turn on Geo Location.

So far the Olympic collectors set up by Steven (@frogo) have 22 machines each collecting Tweets from each of the Olympic venues all over London and we have managed to collect over 1.4 million tweets from the last 14 days of the Olympics (Each has been sent from the vicinity of each venue hence why the individual numbers are low).
The Big Data Toolkit will be entering a beta testing phase in the next couple of months, to allow anyone to collect and map tweets – the aim is to make it as easy as possible while also maintaing the feed for data analysis.
You can view the live data either within our other feeds via our London CityDashboard or direct at http://bigdata.casa.ucl.ac.uk/olympics/
For more detailed information take a look at Ollie’s Suprageography site and Steven’s Big Data Toolkit.
 
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