Below the video:

We were excited to hear that on a March 6th visit to the Brazilian pavilion at CeBIT 2012, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and German Chancellor Angela Merkel sat down to try out the Alphabet Table, an augmented reality educational game, conceived and developed by YDreams for Positivo Informática, one of Brazil’s largest computer and educational technology manufacturers.

As you can see in the photo below, Dilma and Angela actually completed an activity using the didactic tool to better understand and experience what the innovative Alphabet table has to offer young learners.

The Educational Alphabet Table, which was also awarded a Gold in the Informatics category by IDEA/Brasil in August 2011, an organization endorsed by the Industrial Designers Society of America, works by combining colorful animations, video and sound to create an interactive environment. The table features a webcam, 32 inch LCD screen and Augmented Reality markers that represent characters in the story. The 2D markers are captured by the camera and transformed into real-time 3D images, which can be treated as “virtual marionettes” on an LCD screen. The educational game, which can be played by up to six students at a time, is ideal for promoting collaboration, exchanging knowledge, and teaching children and students with special needs their “ABC’s”.

Our YVision team has been pretty busy these last few months replacing some of the engines to make sure YVision is executable on as many platforms as possible. The work’s paid off! This latest release brings better support for Silverlight 5 and mobile devices in the near future.

Check out the features for the latest release:

• Support for Silverlight 5 final (RTW) – Now you can run your 3D interactive applications in the browser. Extensive work has been done to make sure you app compiles for .NET 4.0 and Silverlight 5 with minimal code changes. Check out a couple of demos on our cases page.
• SLARToolKit on .NET 4.0 – Now you can take advantage of the popular augmented-reality engine on other platforms other than Silverlight. SLARToolKit is now included in the SDK, you don’t need a separate download. Be sure to check the SLARToolKit license to make sure it fits your needs.
• Steering behaviors – These allow you to apply behaviors (defined by Craig Reynolds) like seek, flee, pursue, evade, wander, arrival, obstacle avoidance, containment, wall following, path following and flow field following to your objects. These can be combined in behavior trees to achieve complex behaviors like flocking, queuing and many more.
• Settings and visualizers – You can now easily expose settings to users so that they can customize/calibrate the application.
• New project templates, item templates and code snippets – In our continuous effort to simplify your work, we added many more templates.  The samples are provided as templates so that you can mess around with them as much as possible. All the samples work on Silverlight and Windows.
• Multiple bug fixes – The framework has proven to be very robust but not without a few issues. If you find any new issue, please report it to us.

This release is only for Windows but we hope to have the Mac OS X release soon. We are working on optimizing the ‘build process’ so we can have simultaneous and more frequent releases in the future.

Go to our download page to get this latest version. We hope you have as much fun trying it out as we did developing it!

The video powered by YDreams’ technology:

Ynvisible (YDreams’ first spinout company) in collaboration with Enfucell and IDTechEx, produced close to 1600 interactive badges to distribute to participants and attendees at the upcoming Printed Electronics USA 2011 tradeshow.

Ynvisible's Interactive Badge for the Printed Electronics Tradeshow

The badges contain three interactive graphic layers, activated by the push of a button. Each layer, designed specifically for the event, conveys IDTechEx’s marketing messages. Technologically, the interactive badges are a hybrid solution, based on a combination of printed electronics  ̶  Ynvisible’s electrochromics-based interactive graphics and Enfucell’s SoftBattery®  ̶  and traditional electronics, namely the printed circuit boards, buttons and wiring. Designers from Ynvisible and IDTechEx jointly designed the interactive badges, with the final assembly of badges carried out by Ynvisible.

“The combination of established color printing and printed interactive graphics brings new levels of interaction and communication power to everyday items. Consumers who enjoy the interactivity of on-line content and services will now increasingly start to find such features also in printed products”, said Jani-Mikael Kuusisto, Chief Business Development Officer for Ynvisible.

IDTechEx Printed Electronics USA 2011 conference and tradeshow is the biggest event in the world on the topic. This year’s tradeshow will be the largest Printed Electronics exhibition to date, with 105 exhibiting companies already confirmed. The tradeshow is on from November 30th to December 1st, 2011 at the Santa Clara Convention Centre.

The following video gives us a comprehensive overview of printed electronics spin-out Ynvisible and its relationship to parent-company YDreams:

Appshaker came up with this very cool way for people to interact with the amazing world of National Geographic Channel’s content from around the globe!

Take a look:

Live Augmented Reality for National Geographic Channel / UPC from Appshaker Ltd on Vimeo.

A great example of augmented reality for young kids. It’s an augmented book, developed by YDreams’ R&D group, where kids can take control of the story. The app is totally powered by YVision:

Positivo Informática’s Educational Alphabet Table, powered by YDreams’ Augmented Reality technology, was distinguished with a Gold award by IDEA/Brasil – the Brazilian edition of the renowned North American International Design Excellence Award (IDEA).

YDreams conceived and developed the Augmented Reality software that powers Positivo Informática’s award-winning Educational Alphabet Table. Positivo Informática, one of Brazil’s largest computer and educational technology manufacturers commissioned Estúdio Flexiv de Design to redesign the table for improved usability. The newly refurbished table was distinguished this past August, in São Paulo, with a Gold award in the Informatics category by IDEA/Brasil, an organization endorsed by the Industrial Designers Society of America.

The table was distinguished by the society for ideally combining design, ergonomics and technological interactivity. The Educational Alphabet Table is a ground-breaking tool for the education and literacy of children, youths, adults and students with special needs. Animations, videos, sound resources and augmented reality technology, allow for interaction with objects in the virtual world, creating an interactive and stimulating atmosphere for students.

The Educational Alphabet Table was also hailed as being environmentally friendly, inclusive, safe and sturdy. Its bright colors and attractive shapes are especially appealing to children. The combination of technology and design have rendered an educational table that serves as a teaching and learning aid that greatly facilitates digital inclusion.

CTT (Correios de Portugal), the Portuguese postal service, commissioned YDreams to develop several interactive solutions to boost customer involvement and autonomy at its new HQ flagship store in Parque das Nações in Lisbon.

The flagship store, inaugurated September 12th, 2011 at its new Lisbon headquarters in Parque das Nações, features YDreams’ interactive solutions, developed and designed to offer appealing interactive platforms that promote and advertise CTT’s products and services, and foster customer involvement and promote autonomy. Guests to the new store are now able to use the latest technologies to purchase products (i.e. stamps, envelops and books) issue money transfers, customize their own postage stamps and browse CTT’s extensive financial products portfolio.

YDreams’ solutions include six large touch screens dispersed throughout the store that double as digital signage informing customers of the various product lines (postal services, telecommunications, etc.) available at the store. A sophisticated back office platform uploads dynamic content onto the tactile touch screens, which display in addition to product information and promo campaigns, recreational yet practical options such as taking one’s picture in loco and using it to create customized postal stamps, or using Augmented Reality technology to visualize envelopes and boxes in their actual size and shape.

Elsewhere in the store customers can interact with a Multi-touch table to explore CTT’s financial products such as international money transfers and certificates of deposit in greater detail. Furthermore, using the potential of multi-touch technology, users can simulate long-term savings investments and view a variety of financial product sheets that they can be forwarded to their email accounts.

Finally to round off the CTT high-tech flagship store experience, YDreams has also created a series of interactive projections featuring randomly generated contents, which are projected onto the store window display, further contributing towards drawing the attention of passersby, promoting the new venue as well as its campaigns and services.

All YDreams’ interactive apps were designed and selected to harmoniously blend into the architectural project for the venue, which was conceived by S3 Arquitectos, a Lisbon based-firm.

Sport Club Recife, a football team in North-eastern Brazil, recently posted the video below showing the club using YVision’s free Beta version of its software development kit (SDK) to create a Boxfall application featuring 3D Augmented Reality cubes customized with the team’s logo!

Yvision, a YDreams’ spinout, is dedicated to the research and production of software development kits. To find out more about them, or download their SDK, visit their website at http://www.yvision.com.

The WIRED UK August 2011 issues profiles ‘Sigas’: Santander’s friendly bank bots”, YDreams’ avant-garde project implemented in 2010 for the Visitors’ Center at Ciudad Group Santander, a gargantuan financial complex in Madrid, Spain.

Click HERE to view the article online; this edition is also available on WIRED UK for iPad.

For a complete overview of the project, click HERE to watch the video.

Today, YDreams’ Natural User Interfaces (NUI) division is officially releasing the free Beta version of its YVision software development kit (SDK), via its dedicated website at http://www.yvision.com.

YVision is the result of ten years of research and development in human-computer interaction. Created by the company division that focuses solely on NUI design and software architecture, this framework is behind many of YDreams’ interactive solutions and has been deployed in thousands of engaging and robust NUI applications.

According to Ivan Franco, YDreams’ Director of R&D, “Our framework is the missing link between traditional Game Engines and Natural User Interfaces. It promotes creativity and expressivity, by offloading the complex interoperability of the multiple technologies, which are indispensable to deliver state-of-the-art interactive products.”

YVision is a component-based framework that allows programmers to develop complex systems based on pre-built modules, which are operated by behavior trees. The .NET – based framework assures faster development, removes the need for complex resource handling and offers users multi-platform deployment for desktops, mobiles and consoles.

The SDK features a full abstraction layer for real-time 3D rendering and was also designed to support the upcoming Microsoft Silverlight 5, enabling users to build the next full 3D experience for the web browser. In addition, YVision offers state-of-the-art physics and computer vision. The creation of NUI applications also depends heavily on sensor acquisition and processing, so YVision is ready to process complex sensor data and manage several kinds of input devices.

“The current beta release is for PCs only. Because we want to offer the best possible experience, extensive testing is being carried out for the Mac and Silverlight platforms, and mobile platforms will soon follow”, explains Mr. Franco,“Stay tuned, because we intend to follow the ‘release often’ motto”.

The SDK, along with detailed information and instructions, is available for download via the following URL: http://www.yvision.com. We hope you will enjoy it and look forward to hearing your feedback!

Castelo Novo is one of the member villages that make up Portugal’s ‘Historical Villages’network, a cluster of urban nuclei, which came into being before the founding of the Portuguese nation.

Atop one of its town’s castle turrets sits the Virtual Sightseeing Scenic Viewer (VSSV), a type of virtual guide that Fundão Municipality assures will leave no visitor asking “What exactly am I looking at?”

The VSSV, deployed for the first time at another castle in north-central Portugal in 2005, lets visitors use the unit to scan the surrounding landscape. Points of interest are detected and displayed in real-time on the unit’s built-in touch-screen. Using Augmented Reality technologies, the VSSV lets visitors view information in the form of text, images and videos about any selected point of interest.

In addition, the VSSV at Castelo Novo also offers visitors a taste of what traditional life was like in that part of the country by including a 3D recreation of a Sheppard herding his flock just outside the castle walls, and a video of a Knights Templar scouting the surrounding countryside from atop Castelo Novo.

YDreams has deployed 13 similar VSSV units throughout Portugal over the last six years. Click HERE to watch a video of the VSSV in Cascais, just outside Lisbon.

YVision was created by the company division that focuses solely on Natural User Interfaces (NUI) application design and software architecture. The innovative development framework has been efficiently deployed in engaging and robust NUI applications that have been, and are, the motors behind many of YDreams interactive solutions.

Click HERE to experience YVision firsthand on your browser. (Note: webcam needed!)

For more detailed info about YVision, go to: http://www.ydreams.com/yvision/

We also recently demoed the YVision app at are2011. You can check it out at the following video link. Demo starts at 05:06 – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsN0tCkAR-Y

May 17th & 18th the Augmented Reality Event (ARE) is back for a second consecutive year to show off a new round of innovation to the technology, media, and marketing communities, and YDreams will be there with its very own booth, so make sure to stop on by!

About a year ago (in June 2010) YDreams headed out to Santa Clara, California, to compete for the coolest Augmented Reality (AR) demo at ARE 2010, the first Augmented Reality Event. After braving a legendary, American Idol-style judging panel comprised of Bruce Sterling, Jesse Schell, and Mark Billinghurst, plus a live audience – who by the way, actually determined the winning demo – YDreams picked up the first ever Auggies Award for their 3D AR tech demo!

Below, raw footage of the first annual Augmented Reality Event (2-3 June, 2010 in Santa Clara, California). YDreams presents their demo at minute 01:00:01

“The Auggies Unplugged” – Best Augmented Reality Demo Competition at ARE 2010 from Ori Inbar on Vimeo.

VicTour is YLabs’s final proof-of-concept resulting from its latest software research project CHAMELEON. During the development process the project generated other examples already published such as FlyAR and the “mother of all depth sensing demos”, long before the whole Kinect frenzy. This depth sensing demo was distinguished with the first Auggie award (the Augmented Reality Oscars) at the Augmented Reality Event 2010.

CHAMELEON emerged from the strong belief that the research and development of next-generation intelligent interaction devices is expected to rely on integrative efforts across several research fields. The main objective of this project was therefore to explore and implement architectures and practical design methodologies for embodied intelligent interaction, with a focus on affective and cognitive computation models, as well as autonomous adaptation and learning of system components and parameters over dynamic multimodal and multi-user environments. Read the rest of this entry »

According to Robert Rice “Augmented Reality is going to be bigger than the web, and it is going to affect nearly every industry and aspect of life”.

Karina Israel is going to explain why in a course she is giving on Augmented Reality at ESPM – Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing’s (Superior Institute for Marketing & Advertising) São Paulo Campus in February 2011. Enjoy!

For more details go to: http://www.espm.br/inovacao/curso.asp?cursoID=44

The YouTube video below gives us a quick but thorough look at the cool Fiat stand at São Paulo’s International Auto show.

YDreams developed the X-ray app and the Augmented Reality Twitter-based app, which you can check out on the video right around 0:40

Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxNVNLxeMzM

YDreams’ mark can be felt at the 26th edition of São Paulo’s International Auto Show underway from October 27th to November 7th at the Anhembi Exhibition pavilion. Car lovers of all ages who flock to the event are privy to interactive technologies that make exploring the cars on display only half the fun.

The interactive technologies specialist introduced a ‘Superman’ style X-Ray vision app that proved to be a most original way for visitors to the Fiat stand to get to know the ‘insides’ and standout features of the brand new Mio prototype, the first collaborative car in the industry. Right next to the car stands a large-sized plasma that invites people to see what event-goers have to say about the Mio on Twitter. The app picks up all Mio-related tweets and playfully displays them alongside the person’s head in comic-strip style thought balloons.

See video below:

Further along, at the Toyota stand, visitors come across another YDreams’ creative application that was developed to help create public awareness and spread the word about the work the Toyota Foundation has been doing to reforest the Brazilian Atlantic Rain forest, as well as its attempts to help preserve the Blue Macaw. At the stand, people are able to see their moving silhouettes outlined on a video wall depicting tropical settings; in an adjacent video wall, people see their silhouette set against landscapes of the Brazilian Pantanal, where a Blue Macaw soars overhead before disappearing from sight.