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The ball and the rackets exist in an augmented reality world.
Here’s two people playing AR ping pong on a table that doesn’t exist. Powered by ZED Mini and HTC Vive
Move away real-life ping pong games – a table and racket is hardly needed anymore to smash those scoreboards.
Developed by Stereolab’s’ ZED Mini and HTC vive, an augmented reality game of table tennis has the internet amazed, and gearing up for a future.
ZED Mini is the world’s first camera mixed-reality camera that uses virtual and augmented reality together. Virtual reality is a totally artificial world created through computer graphics which the user navigates and interacts with like in the real world.
Augmented reality, however, is a scenario like this one, where players can see the virtual table, rackets and balls, but also the real-world room they’re in. And HTC Vive is a headset which, “pulls virtual worlds off your computer screen and into your home”.
After debuting its virtual Pocket Gallery last year with the works of Johannes Vermeer, Google Arts & Culture has released a sequel that brings even more artists into your home via augmented reality.
Available in the Google Arts & Culture app for iOS and Android, “The Art of Color” features 33 famous paintings from around the world organized into wings by color palette, with Pablo Picasso and Vincent Van Gogh among the featured artists.
Like the Vermeer gallery, users can anchor a miniature version of the virtual gallery in their physical environment via ARKit or ARCore.
To access “The Art of Color” feature, first open the app, then click on the camera icon button located at the bottom of the app. The next menu will show you a menu including the Pocket Galley option. Once you click on the Pocket Gallery menu option you’ll be prompted to look find a well-lit surface upon which to place the virtual gallery.
Once that tracking is done, you can then tap on the “Art of Color” icon, located at the bottom of the screen, and download the new feature. When that’s done, just tap the Enter button and you’ll be immersed in a virtual gallery in your real world location. The experience almost becomes a VR experience, except users can still see the real world through the exit doors of the gallery.
Once immersed in the gallery, users can walk around the virtual halls to view works of art more closely or double-tap to transport themselves to various wings of the digital museum. Also, tapping on a painting brings up a card with more information on the piece.
“One of the goals of the Google Arts & Culture team is to find new or unexpected ways to bring people closer to art. From renowned masterpieces to hidden gems, ‘The Art of Color’ brings together artworks like Georgia O’Keeffe’s ‘Red Cannas’ and Amrita Sher-Gil’s ‘Mother India’ or Hokusai’s ‘South Wind, Clear Dawn,'” said Andy Joslin, design lead for Google Arts & Culture, in a blog post.
While Google has begun using augmented reality in many of its existing products, like Google Maps and Google Search, its seems like the Google Arts & Culture team has gone “all in” on AR, so much so that they’ve consolidated all of the AR tools under the Camera tab in the app.
In recent years, the Google Arts & Culture initiative has been best known for its VR experiments, but augmented reality is increasingly front and center for the team, including an Art Projector tool that brings life-sized individual works of art into the user’s personal space.
Outside of its mobile app, the team has also partnered with other organizations to tell their stories in augmented reality. For example, the team assisted CERN in using AR to explore the Big Bang. The Google team also spearheaded the Notable Womenproject, which featured an experience that used AR to digitally insert historically famous women into real currency.
Despite these wide ranging uses, it appears that showing off art in AR through a mobile app is becoming one of Google’s favorite palettes for immersive experimentation. And, until teleportation becomes a thing, it’s the only way to see the world’s most famous works of art in one space.
Dal palco dell’evento Inspire 2019 organizzato da Microsoft e in scena in questi giorni a Las Vegas, Julia White (Corporate Vice President di Azure) si è rivolta ai presenti in sala descrivendo in giapponese di una nuova tecnologia sviluppata. Julia White, però, non parla la lingua del Sol Levante. Lo ha fatto per lei il suo ologramma, un complesso e dettagliato modello tridimensionale che ne ha replicato fedelmente le fattezze, la voce, i movimenti e persino i vestiti.
Un ologramma per tradurre ciò che diciamo
È il frutto dell’incontro tra la Mixed Reality del visore HoloLens di seconda generazione e gli algoritmi di intelligenza artificiale gestiti sui server cloud dell’infrastruttura Azure. Per il rendering del parlato è stata impiegata la sintesi vocale di un sistema text-to-speech basato su rete neurale. È bene precisare che la conversione da essere umano a ologramma non avviene in tempo reale, ma necessita di uno scan preventivo del corpo nonché della registrazione di quanto far pronunciare allo speaker virtuale. Detto questo, la resa visibile nella demo qui sotto risulta piuttosto convincente.
HoloLens 2, annunciato nei mesi scorsi in occasione del MWC 2019 di Barcellona, è al momento un’esclusiva dell’ambito business. Entro fine anno arriverà anche la Developer Edition, accessibile dagli sviluppatori allo stesso prezzo di 3.500 dollari (o 99 dollari al mese). L’intento di Microsoft è quello di spingere l’evoluzione della Mixed Reality per avere successo laddove la realtà virtuale e quella aumentata hanno parzialmente fallito, arrivando a offrire non solo concept o esercizi di stile, ma prodotti e servizi che possano risultare realmente utili sia per i professionisti sia nel segmento consumer.
The Science Behind TIME’s New Apollo 11 Moon Landing Augmented Reality Experience
TIME this week launched TIME Immersive, a new iPhone and Android app that we’ll use to deliver groundbreaking augmented reality and virtual reality experiences. First up: the TIME Moon Landing experience, the world’s most accurate 3D re-creation of the Apollo 11 mission, which took place 50 years ago this month. Users can watch an approximately five-minute AR simulation of the Apollo 11 landing, narrated by TIME’s Jeffrey Kluger and featuring original NASA audio from the mission, then explore the surface of the moon on their own.
What makes the TIME Moon Landing hyper-accurate? At the experience’s core lies incredibly precise data meticulously collected over the last 20 years by John Knoll, the chief creative officer and visual effects supervisor at Industrial Light and Magic, a top Hollywood special effects company founded by George Lucas.
“I’m old enough to remember seeing the Apollo 11 landing live as a kid,” says Knoll, who gave his data to TIME. “That really left a big impression on me. In the years that followed, I was always fascinated with the space program.”
Knoll began collecting Apollo 11 landing data after stumbling upon a transcript of radio calls between the spacecraft and mission control. Those transcripts, he says, underscored the harrowing few minutes just before the “Eagle” lander touched down on the lunar surface, when it was running dangerously low on fuel. That moment, says Knoll, was largely glossed over in the Apollo 11 documentaries of his youth. “In reading the timestamped transcripts, this is white-knuckle time,” he says.
Knoll’s commitment to accuracy came in part from his disappointment with some Hollywood directors who pay lip service to scientific precision but abandon it in favor of what they or the studios believe is better storytelling. “I was very committed to making the re-creation as technically accurate as I could make it, in getting everything right about the motion of the spacecraft, the lighting conditions, the lunar terrain, where individual rocks and craters were,” says Knoll. “And to figure out if there were clever or sneaky ways to extract data from unlikely sources.”
To that end, Knoll relied on a handful of data sources, including NASA telemetry graphs, footage from a descent camera on the lunar module (LEM), and data from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a probe orbiting the moon that was launched in 2009. He made up for shortcomings in the data with advanced computer vision techniques, including one process whereby the altitude of moon surface features can be estimated based on how bright or dark they appear in photographs.
“When you look at a photograph of the moon, and you see all that light and shadow, what you’re seeing is the orientation of the surface relative to the sun,” says Knoll. “If a surface is brighter, it’s because it’s inclined more towards the illuminance, and if it’s darker, it’s because it’s inclined more away. If you start on one end of an image, and if a surface is lighter than the average then it’s inclined up, so you accumulate the altitude, and if it’s darker, it’s declined, and so you decrement the altitude. By doing that, you can integrate an approximation of the terrain.”
Knoll hopes that the experience helps people better understand and take pride in the complexity of the Apollo project.
“I’m a big champion of science education, and people really understanding what we achieved,” says Knoll. “Those Apollo missions were great and amazing, and especially in these very divisive times, everyone regardless of their political affiliation can look back with some pride and look back at the accomplishment.”
The TIME Moon Landing experience was co-produced by TIME, John Knoll, the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum and Smithsonian’s Digitization Program Office, Trigger, RYOT, and the Yahoo News XR Program. It is available within the TIME Immersive app, which you can download for iPhone in Apple’s App Store, or for Android in the Google Play Store. Look out for more TIME Immersive projects in the near future.
Bimba ha un tumore al cuore: salvata a Milano con il primo intervento con gli ologrammi.
I medici durante l’operazione hanno usato una copia perfetta del cuore della bimba.
L’intervento
La caduta durante una tranquilla giornata in campagna. La corsa all’ospedale più vicino, in Albania, e il tragico referto dei dottori: una grossa massa tumorale, 5 centimetri per 3, proprio accanto al cuore. Quindi la decisione dei genitori di venire in Italia per dare una possibilità alla loro piccola. Una possibilità che è diventata realtà a Milano.
Miracolo dei medici del Policlinico di San Donato, che sono riusciti a rimuovere un tumore dal cuore di una bimba di sei anni – la piccola Melissa – grazie al primo intervento messo a segno in Italia con l’utilizzo della realtà aumentata.
Si trattava, spiegano dall’ospedale meneghino, di un “tumore al cuore che si manifesta improvvisamente, una diagnosi terribile per una patologia rara definita inoperabile. L’intervento era molto rischioso, la possibilità di intaccare e danneggiare i tessuti circostanti al tumore era alta e la letteratura scientifica – proseguono dalla clinica – è stata di poco aiuto, poiché i casi descritti sono rarissimi”.
A Milano l’operazione con la realtà aumentata
Eppure al Policlinico l’équipe guidata dal dottor Alessio Giamberti – responsabile di cardiochirurgia delle patologia congenite – ha trovato il modo di salvare la vita a Melissa. L’intuizione vincente di Giamberti e del dottor Massimo Chessa è stata quella di ricostruire il cuore compromesso di Melissa mediante ologramma, “tecnologia molto performante e plasmabile”.
Gli ingegneri biomedici del Politecnico di Milano – Francesco Sturla, Filippo Piatti, Omar Antonio Pappalardo e Giovanni Rossini – hanno creato una copia perfetta del cuore della bimba permettendo così, ricostruiscono dall’ospedale, “di simulare l’intervento, prima in laboratorio e poi in sala operatoria”.
L’intervento per la rimozione del tumore è perfettamente riuscito, così come il secondo intervento per il posizionamento di un defibrillatore.
“L’ologramma salvavita”
“L’ologramma ci ha consentito di visualizzare meglio la conformazione della massa e di decidere quale fosse la miglior via d’accesso e la modalità di intervento. In questo caso la tecnologia è stata davvero cruciale, direi salvavita, perché ci ha dato la certezza di poter enucleare il tumore, fortunatamente benigno, senza provocare danni”, ha spiegato il dottor Giamberti.
“L’ologramma è attualmente la tecnologia migliore al supporto del chirurgo. La rimozione era assolutamente necessaria – ha concluso il medico – poiché la massa crescendo avrebbe potuto ostruire il flusso sanguigno dando origine ad aritmie, talvolta mortali”.
Melissa, grazie al suo ologramma “speciale” e ai suoi angeli custodi col camice, adesso dovrà “soltanto” sottoporsi a controlli periodici, ma potrà avere una vita normale e tornare nella sua casa a festeggiare il suo settimo compleanno.
These days, new and evolving technology has introduced the world to 3 very fascinating realities, Virtual Reality or VR, Augmented Reality or AR, and Mixed Reality or MR. in this article, you will see what makes them different from each other and how they are contributing in different areas of work. Let’s have a brief look at what is VR, AR, and MR
● VR — With VR app development, it engages users in a completely artificial digital setting.
● AR — It covers virtual objects on the real-world setting.
● MR — It covers and keeps the virtual objects anchored to the real world.
Virtual Reality or VR
Virtual Reality (VR) is also called a computer-simulated reality which delivers an immersive experience. In this, computer technologies are used with the real headsets to create an imaginary world with the lifelike sounds, imageries and other feelings that are the imitation of a real environment. An accurate VR app development setting will immerse all the five senses in the human body including taste, smell, sight, sound, and touch, but in reality, it is not always possible. Nowadays, it can be said that VR has established itself in some very practical areas, especially after the years of popularity in the gaming industry. VR uses two types of main headsets:
1. PC-connected
These headsets are connected to a computer or gaming console that provides with top-quality visual experience. They can also be used with special controllers and users can interact with the virtual world.
2. Standalone
These headsets are not needed to be connected to a computer or a gaming console. Most of the standalone headsets use a smartphone screen for interacting with virtual reality. They are quite affordable and easy to use
Augmented Reality or AR
Augmented Reality (AR) is live and direct or indirect viewing of a real-world environment where its elements are amplified or augmented using audio, video, graphics, or GPS data. It gives you a lot more freedom than what you get in the real world. Smartphones and tablets are two of the most widespread means of AR as of now. Two types of main devices are:
1. Portable devices
AR is perhaps the most reachable and handy reality technology, as people can get access to it using portable devices like smartphones and tablets in order to use applications based on augmented reality. AR apps simply use a smartphone camera in order to seize the real world. Then the virtual items are overlaid, and users can easily see them on their portable device.
2. AR glasses and headsets
Another way to enjoy augmented reality is by using smart glasses or AR headsets. As compared to VR headsets, these AR glasses and headsets don’t engage the users into a completely virtual environment. Instead, they just add virtual objects in the real world.
Mixed Reality or MR
Mixed Reality is also called as hybrid reality. It is the merger of real and virtual environments in order to create new environments and visuals. In that new environment, both physical and digital entities exist together, interacting in real time. It means a new imagery is placed inside a real space in such a manner that the new imagery can interact to a degree, with the real world as you know it. The distinguishing factor of MR is that the artificial content and the real or physical world content can interact with one another in real time.
There can also be a different form of mixed reality. In this new form of mixed reality, users watch and interact with a fully virtual environment which is overlapped on the real world surrounding the users. If you are finding it a bit confusing, look at it from a different perspective. Just imagine that you are fully engaged and interacting into a completely virtual environment. However, you are still walking around in your room at your place. What do you think will happen if you trip over an object lying on the floor? To prevent any such incidence, your headset must be able to keep track of the real world while you are immersed in the virtual world and adjust the virtual setting accordingly. This type of MR is a lot closer to VR as compared to AR.
There are different types of devices that can be used for mixed reality:
1. Holographic devices
These headsets comprise transparent glasses through which you will be able to keep track of your surroundings easily and avoid any kinds of unfortunate incidents while using MR. in this; Virtual experiences are generated using holograms.
2. Immersive devices
These headsets comprise of non-translucent spectacles that totally block out the real world just like VR headsets. They use cameras for tracking the real world.
Conclusion
It can be difficult to point out one choice from all three realities. While VR is being used for years in the gaming industry, AR and MR are also not far behind. However, while AR just overlays the virtual objects on the real environment, in MR, the digital parts of the environment are more conscious of what is happening in the real surroundings around you and thus represent a more realistic interaction.
Players can be virtually splashed by a whale and chat with a hobbit. Credits: Air New Zealand
Air New Zealand is taking tourism promotion to the tabletop with a new augmented reality board game.
The Air New Zealand Fact or Fantasy Game of New Zealand sees players wear Magic Leap One headsets to view and interact with a 3D map of Aotearoa.
Using Magic Leap technology, users can virtually watch the growth of a kauri tree, interact with a rather grumpy hobbit and get splashed by a breaching whale.
The game was on display at the first L.E.A.P conference in Los Angeles this week.
Magic Leap’s technology works by layering digital objects onto the real world so that light enters the eye as it would with a real object. This means users can see detail both up close and from afar.
Air NZ has been working with the creative team at Framestore for the last 18 months to create its board game.
The airline’s Jodi Williams says it’s important Air NZ continues to discover new technologies to improve the customer experience.
“By getting in early and being both a developer and creator, we have been able to test and learn, creating an incredible platform,” she says.
Ms Williams also says the Magic Eye technology may be used to “reframe customers’ perceptions of the physical cabin environment”.
The Air New Zealand Fact or Fantasy Game of New Zealand can be played by four people and is aimed at educating and promoting New Zealand as a destination.
Unlike VR, when you’re talking about augmented reality, describing what an experience is like can be incredibly difficult — primarily because the experiences are even more contextual than relatively static virtual worlds that don’t involve real-world settings.
In AR, everything is about how “you” see things interacting with your real environment. Such is the case with what I’m calling the most important demonstration of Magic Leap technology to date in the form of an AI assistant called Mica.
Together, the team described a world in which a Magic Leap user will be able to interact with intelligent assistants in the form of fully realized augmented reality humans that can recognize your position in a room, as well as items in that room. Having mapped the area and your position within it, the AI assistant will then interact with you to help you do any number of things.
For example, as detailed in the presentation, the AI assistant might scan the Magic Leap One wearer’s eyes to detect his mood and then suggest an appropriate song to play through the home’s music system. Similarly, the AI assistant my access the Magic Leap One user’s preferences to adjust things such a the level of light in a room at a certain time of day.
We’re already becoming accustomed to such interactions on the audio plane via digital assistants like Amazon’s Alexa, Google Home, and, to a lesser extent, Apple’s Siri. But what Magic Leap is describing is putting an even more robust and responsive version of such a digital assistant in the form of a human that inhabits the same space as you, thus taking the assistant metaphor to its highest level. It sounds and looks a bit like science fiction, but it’s not.
What Magic Leap is describing is so close to reality, the company now feels comfortable enough to offer demonstrations of a rudimentary version of the dynamic at work with the Magic Leap One in conjunction with its intelligent assistant Mica.
The result is a stunning experience that takes AR into brand new and exciting territory.
I met Mica for the first time earlier this week. And if you get a chance to meet her, she will fundamentally change how your view the Magic Leap One and augmented reality in general.
When Magic Leap’s team brought me into an empty room hidden deep in the bowels of an LA event center, I didn’t know what to expect. The space was designed to look like a normal room, complete with a table, two chairs, and other furniture situated around the table. Nothing looked particularly futuristic or tech-enabled, so I wasn’t expecting much. Wow, was I wrong.
Upon donning the Magic Leap One, I’m greeted by a virtual woman (Mica) sitting at the very real wooden table. Then, Mica, with an inviting smile, gestures for me to join her and sit in the chair opposite her. I oblige, and then a very weird interaction begins — she starts smiling at me, seemingly looking for a reaction.
I’ll admit, I deliberately avoided smiling (though it was really hard, Mica seems so nice) and kept a poker face in an attempt to see if I could somehow throw the experience off by not doing the expected, that is, returning the smile.
Undaunted, Mica continued to look into my eyes and go through a series of “emotions” that, surprisingly, made me feel a bit guilty about being so stoic.
It’s at this point that I should mention that she doesn’t speak yet, so all of our interactions were conducted in silence, and instead of using words, she communicated using gestures, eye moments, and various body language. At first, I thought this might be a limitation, but retrospect, I think this served to make the experience even more impactful.
That would have been enough to mildly impress me, but what came next was the kicker. She then pointed to a real wooden picture frame on the table, gesturing for me to hang it on a pin on the wall next to us. I did as asked, and… it was the eurekamoment. This was a virtual human sitting at a real world table and she just got me to change something in the real world based on her direction.
But then it got better. Once I’d hung the empty frame, Mica got up (she’s about five feet six inches tall) and began writing a message inside the frame, which in context looked about as real as if an actual person had begun writing on the space.
Alas, I don’t remember what the message was (honestly, I was too blown away by what was happening), but I’m assuming it was somewhat profound, as Mica then looked to me in a way that seemed to ask that I consider the meaning of the message. After a few beats, the life-sized, augmented reality human walked out of the room. But she didn’t just disappear into a wall in a flurry of sparkly AR dust. Instead, she walked behind a real wall in the room leading to a hallway. It was a subtle but powerful touch that increased the realism of the entire interaction.
As I said earlier, it’s incredibly difficult to describe just how profound this experience was, but if and when it’s made available to the public, you’ll be doing yourself a grave disservice if you pass the opportunity up. `
I’ve been trying to think of tool or app that would compel me to wear the Magic Leap One for an entire day. And while I’ve had the device for months now, I haven’t been able to think of anything that would get me to wear it beyond one hour spurts of activity. That’s all changed now. Although battery life and the experience itself aren’t quite ready for such rigorous and extended use, I could easily see coming home and slipping on the Magic Leap One for the rest of the night if it meant having access to such a fully realized AI assistant such as Mica.
After meeting Mica, I have no doubt that this is what the virtual assistant future will look like for most people in the very near future. It’s not assured that it will be Magic Leap that delivers it, but whichever company does, I think it’s safe to say that Magic Leap was first to show us that future in this particular way, and it’s incredible.
Hevolussvela le innovative soluzioni di mixed reality messe a punto per il Gruppo Würth, player mondiale nella distribuzione di sistemi di fissaggio e montaggio.
In questo settore, Hevolus propone HoloWarehouse e HoloMaintenance, piattaforme che consentono la massima interazione tra operatore e sistemi informativo. Un vero e proprio cambio di paradigma per chi lavora sul campo, il tutto basato sui visori attivi Microsoft Hololens. In dettaglio, HoloWarehouse è una App in Mixed Reality per la presentazione e configurazione delle soluzioni logistiche. Mentre Holomaintenance è deputata alla gestione di attività post-vendita di manutenzione e assistenza remota.
Grazie ad HoloWarehouse, ad esempio, sarà più facile per un’azienda meccanica capire in che modo potenziare la sicurezza degli ambienti di lavoro. Così possono fare ora clienti – attuali e potenziali – di Würth, installando nei propri stabilimenti di produzione i distributori automatici per l’antinfortunistica Würth (che includono guanti, mascherine, occhiali di sicurezza, ecc.).
Grazie alla tecnologia Hevolus e agli Hololens di Microsoft, l’ologramma 3D del distributore ne mostra il funzionamento: al passaggio di un badge elettronico, il dispenser eroga al lavoratore l’equipaggiamento di sicurezza personalizzato in base alla sua mansione lavorativa, garantendo all’azienda il tracciamento quotidiano dei prodotti stoccati e permettendo la gestione in tempo reale dei riordini.
Invece, in caso di guasti o malfunzionamenti, grazie a HoloMaintenance, Würth può gestire in tempi celeri gli interventi di manutenzione o riparazione del distributore in modo diretto, ottenendo le informazioni necessarie dall’ologramma 3D o in modalità remota, chiamando in videoconferenza il supporto tecnico specializzato che potrà vedere esattamente ciò che l’operatore on site visualizza con gli Hololens e indirizzarne diagnosi e procedure di intervento.
Hevolus sarà presenta a SMAU Milano. Hevolus presenterà in fiera ulteriori novità in cantiere, tra cui i suoi programmi di ricerca più recenti e l’innovativa soluzione Photoplanner, studiata per Natuzzi, la più grande azienda italiana nel settore dell’arredamento.
Antonella La Notte, CEO di Hevolus Siamo orgogliosi di prendere parte a SMAU anche quest’anno continuando a portare innovazione tecnologica in un settore in cui fino a poco tempo fa sembrava impensabile, quale il mondo retail. La Mixed Reality rappresenta per le aziende un’incredibile opportunità per regalare ai propri clienti un’esperienza d’acquisto unica e siamo lieti che partner di pregio come Würth ci accordino la propria fiducia per portare la customer experience su un nuovo livello.
OnSight is mixed-reality software that allows scientists and engineers to virtually walk and meet on Mars. It was created by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in collaboration with Microsoft, for the HoloLens. The software won NASA’s Software of the Year Award 2018. For more about NASA’s exploration of Mars, visit https://mars.nasa.gov
Augmented World 