In 2006 this blog was used in the New Media and Learning workshop”. You will still find the blogs posts related to it.
Now I am giving a new life for this blog.. This will be my blog in an online course starting in March 2008. The course’s online home is in the Wkiversity.
Just found a project of Nokia Research Center that is very close to the ShedLight idea. Didn’t find any dates when they came-up with the idea, but at least they have been presenting it only this autumn. Anyway, I assume they have worked on this for some years already. It is common that people come-up with the same idea same time in a different places. The idea is also so obvious, that…
They have a prototype, too. Have a look:
http://research.nokia.com/research/projects/mara/
There is also a publication about it in here:
http://www.dirkreiners.com/ISMAR06Demos/one-pagers/Ismar%2006%20MARA%20Demo%20Proposal.pdf
I think we should put the idea forward.
Here’s the spring demo day presentation video:
ShedLight demo day video, 6.6MB, 320×240, 3min 26s, QuickTime 6 or higher needed “>
The demo is a bit more realistic than the previous one as it’s placed in a VR photgraphed from a real place and the view from the phone is what it actually would look like. We debating if the notes could be seen on such a small display so this is proof that they would.
For anyone who’s interested in the technical details, the demo consists of two QuickTime movies, both containing a VR. The phone is skinned so it gives an illusion of the user being at the actual place. Those notes are just graphics though as placing similar sprites and moving them around is just too CPU-intensive to do in a cubic panorama.
In the article writers (see below) discuss broadly issues related to Augmented Reality concepts, techniques and technologies and they also point out some interesting facts about AR in outdoor unplanned environments and specifically about the orientation information tracking.
” …Tracking in unprepared environments may rely heavily on tracking visible natural features (such as objects that already exist in the environment, without modification). If a database of the environment is available, we can base tracking on the visible horizon silhouette or rendered predicted views of the surrounding buildings, which we then match with the video. Alternately, given a limited set of known features, a tracking system can automatically select and measure new natural features in the environment.”
In one lecture I mentioned about using preplaced markers in the environment. The writers of the article think: ” … It generally is not practical to cover environment with markers. A hybrid compass/gyroscope tracker provides motion-stabilized orientation measurements at several outdoor locations. With the addition of video tracking (not in real time) the system produces nearly pixel accurate results on known landmark features. … Either Global Positioning System (GPS) or dead reckoning techniques usually track the real-time position outdoors, although both have significant limitations (for example GPS requires a clear view of the sky).”
From R. Azuma, Y. Baillot, R. Behringer, S. Feiner, S. Julier and
B. MacIntyre. Recent Advances in Augmented Reality. IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications, 22(12), Nov. 2001
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~azuma/cga2001.pdf
For documenting the workshop week I thought to write something about the day 3 and 4.
In the morning of the third day Mika P. Nieminen from Software Business and Engineering institute of the HUT gave a presentation. Mika talked about the Amire project and the tool for authoring mixed reality.
In the forth day Riitta Vänskä from Nokia visited us. Riitta talked about mobile learning and their experiences and experiments inside Nokia. We also gave her a demo of the Shedlight concept.
In the afternoon we watched the video mock-up with some visitors. I think we need a frame around the picture that will make it more clear when the picture is inside a mobile phone. The voice over is also sometimes a bit difficult to follow. I think there is too much stuff in it.
In the presentation Richard pointed us a project and product with a lot of similarities with our concept. (I lost the name and link of the project. If you wrote it down somewhere, please, post it here as a comment.)
Even that there are similarities I think our concept is better. Our concept is more “social software” than the other idea. With our Shedlight you always decide if you want to browse the space around you. This makes it more “pull” than “push” media. You can also make visible only those annotations you have found interesting (compare to RSS). This feature can be introduced when the world is becoming very messy with a lot of annotations.
I would like to see the video mock-up to be presented in the demo day. Let’s try to make a new version of it in three weeks.
Here’s the result of a few days work on the ShedLight concept. The first concept video which was presented today at one o’clock. Far from being the best video which this team can create it’s a starting point for refining the concept and it also functioned well as a conversation starter. Thanks to the people from outside the course who came to participate in the discussions.
ShedLight video, 7.4MB, 320×240, 2min 7s, QuickTime 6 or higher needed
Teemu Arina posted his presentation, “Integrating human and the machine“, from Tuesday in his blog. There are audio and slides. Thank you Teemu!.
Tomorrow morning Riitta Vänskä from Nokia will be visiting us. She is going to talk about mobile learning and their experiences and experiments inside Nokia. For several years already they have been using mobile phones in their internal competence development, knowledge management, work processes etc. Riitta will be in the Lab around 11. However, I propose that we will meet at 10 in the meeting room and check the status.
The presentation of your concept will be already at 13.00-14.00 in the 4th floor lecture room. Don’t worry if the video is not ready at that point – even that I believe that it actually will be ready, after you saw Ville’s example today. If the video is not ready you can use some of the video material and then just explain the concept. We may then later “finalize” the video.
We are using a writeboard to write down the plans and design decisions. The objective is to produce a video mock-up that will explain the concept worked out in the workshop.
Shooting of the video should be seen as one stage in the design process. The aim is not make a pitch video (selling the idea for someone) or to tell a great story. The aim is to explain what is the concept about to open discussion about it. So, keep it simple. 
A link to the workshop’s writeborad is now in the right side of this site, under the about.
I found a The Handheld AR project that is using PDAs and smartphones.