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

Following Portugal and Switzerland, the Sensorium (a sensorial experience initially developed by YDreams for L’Oreal Portugal’s Luxury division, and launched in November 2010) roll-out continues. Another interactive gondola was just installed in Stockholm at Åhlens, Sweden’s largest department store!

Forum Sintra, located on the outskirts of Lisbon, is the 12th and most recent Multimall Management shopping center in Portugal. The center, which opened its doors to the public in April 2011, wanted to offer shoppers an innovative attraction that would appeal especially to younger audiences, and help foster enjoyable memories and positive connections between guests and the center.

After brainstorming with client Multimall, creative technologies specialist YDreams proposed a giant-sized interactive virtual aquarium they dubbed Fixelândia, for the enjoyment of the center’s guests. (Note: the name is a play on words because in Portuguese fixe means cool, but also sounds like the word ‘fish’)

The experience, unique to Forum Sintra, gives guests the chance to create and thoroughly customize their own virtual pet fish. Two touch consoles, located at each end of the giant virtual aquarium, comprised of fifteen 40” monitors, invite shoppers to customize their pets. Guests use the touch screens to create their new friend from scratch – they decide on the shape of the body and fins, as well as the color of its eyes and stripes. The variables available enable guests to create up to 30.000 distinct fish, so the risk that any two fish will be identical is minimal! After determining what their new pet will look like, guests get to name it and release it into Fixelândia!

Creating their new pet fish is only half the fun; to make sure they grow into happy, healthy Guppies, the fish need to be fed and visited, a task that can only be accomplished by checking in at the touch consoles at Forum Sintra. The more you visit your virtual pet fish, the bigger and happier it grows, and the more you are able to further customize it by adding new features. In addition, a dedicated website (http://www.fixelandia.net) is also available so that guests can regularly check up on their pet fish from home to see how it’s doing.

The 2014 FIFA World Cup is just around the corner and Rio de Janeiro’s Maracanã Stadium is set to host the final game.

While work to renovate and upgrade the stadium is in full force, fans can check out YDreams’ Augmented Reality app, developed in collaboration with Sirius for Odebrect Construction, to get a better look at the 3D model of the new & improved stadium.

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.

Rock in Rio, one of the largest music festivals in the world, is going strong in its namesake city of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The festival kicked off on September 23rd and is underway till October 2nd. Also going strong and determined not to miss the music festival is YDreams Brasil, which is bringing its own brand of interactivity to the festival with two very different stands!

The first immerses visitors in an underwater voyage aboard the Nautilus of Rock – a stand-come submarine, where visitors can, among other things, create and customize their very own virtual rocker-fish, which immediately come into being in the sub’s virtual aquarium. The latter stand developed for the state government of Rio de Janeiro, and of a very different nature, keeps the adrenaline pumping by giving folks a chance to take a virtual flight over the breath-taking sights Rio de Janeiro state has to offer.

Both are without a doubt two excellent ways to make sure there is never a dull moment at Rock in Rio 2011.

The Nautilus of Rock

Virtual Hand-gliding over Rio de Janeiro State

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.

YVision, YDreams’ Natural User Interfaces (NUI) division, has just announced that its Beta version now supports development on Mac OS X.

For more info and to give it a try, go to: http://www.yvision.com/2011/09/15/yvision-development-now-also-supported-on-mac-os-x/

Positivo Informática, the largest computer and educational technology manufacturer in Brazil commissioned YDreams to develop an Augmented Reality (AR) – educational table they named Alphabet. The educational solution debuted at the 55th Congess for São Paulo Municipalities, this past April, at the Centro de Convenções Costa da Mata Atlântica in São Paulo state.

The table, which has been endorsed by the Brazilian Ministry of Education, combines colorful animations, video and sound to create an interactive environment. The table features a webcam, 32 inch LCD screen and AR markers that represent the 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 the LCD screen.

Carla Flores, Positiva Informatica’s Product Manager explained that the company chose to go with a ‘virtual theater’ theme so that the product could progress and grow from there. Basically the ‘made for the classroom’ Alphabet Table starts by telling the students a story. The students, aided by teachers, then select a character and re-enact what they’ve heard. The camera transforms the markers into on-screen 3D characters, which the students interact with by playing out what they’ve listened to or read. At a more advanced stage, the students may also use Alphabet to create a story of their own, which they can record and edit resulting in a short animated film.

The educational game, which can be played by six students at a time, is ideal for promoting collaboration, exchanging knowledge, and teaching children and students with special needs their “ABC’s”.

Starting at minute 1:00, the video below shows the Alphabet Table in action:

This past June, Ynvisible and Enfucell, a leading Eurpean Cleantech company, collaborated on an integrated prototype for the 2011 edition of LOPE-C in Frankfurt. Both companies are now looking to extend this partnership in order to pursue integrated commercial applications and joint development projects. Potential joint products include magazine covers and greeting cards.

Furthermore, the YDreams spinout has a new edition to its team: industry veteran Jani-Mikael Kuusisto, previously Business Development Manager for Printed Intelligence at VTT, the largest applied research organization in Northern Europe, joins Ynvisible as its Chief Business Development Officer.

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!

In the video below, Audience Entertainment, co-owned and fueled by YDreams’ technology, brings interactive fun to a nightclub event in China. Simple hand gestures enable the crowd to control and maneuver the car in a Redbull-themed virtual race:

The pioneering interactive solution, which lets customers interact with a gesture-based interface to answer a series of key questions developed to determine which L’Oreal fragrance is best suited to their personalities, tastes, and lifestyles, just made its debut in the fragrances sections of the Peek & Cloppenburg department store in Geneva, Switzerland.

Future plans to implement an additional 15 units at numerous venues around the world are being discussed by executives at L’Oreal headquarters. Sensorium, developed in conjunction with L’Oreal Portugal’s Luxury Division, was first launched at Perfumes & Companhia shops in Portugal in November 2010.

Click HERE to watch the ‘making of’ Sensorium video.

YVision, our proprietary tech platform, now runs on all major browsers! Brief video below shows Beta version with real-time, 3D interaction, being tested:

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 »

Rebellion Lab, a digital strategy boutique, had some pretty cool things to say about YDreams’ work on their blog!

The quote below refers more specifically to Sensorium, a sensorial experience developed for L’Oreal Portugal’s Luxury division, and launched in November 2010.

Nobody really knows where the future is heading, buy YDreams seems to have a better sense than most. Plus, they seem to have the combined tech + design acumen that few outside Apple seem to possess. [sic]

Click HERE to read post!

Ynvisible, created in January 2010 as our first spin-out company, for the development of new technologies in printed electronics, will list its shares on the First Quotation Board (Open Market) of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange starting February 9th, 2011.

The initial stages of Ynvisible’s technology development date back to 2005, when YDreams and research groups from the Faculty of Sciences and Technology at the New University of Lisbon (FCT/UNL) started a joint research initiative aimed at developing electrochromic displays on a variety of surfaces. This partnership is still active and going strong, particularly with FCT/UNL’s Photochemistry and Supramolecular Chemistry Group, led by Prof. Fernando Pina.

Ynvisible’s goal is to become a world-leading developer of electrochromic displays which may be printed on any surface or object, including paper, plastic, glass, ceramics, wood-based materials and cork. Ynvisible is targeting the mass production of electrochromic displays that are printed, flexible, transparent, low power, sunlight-readable and low cost.

For more information, or to read the company’s complete news release and extended summary, check out there website at: http://www.ynvisible.com/

On this end, we’ll be sure to fill you in all future developments!

Sensorium is YDreams’ latest project developed in conjunction with L’Oreal Portugal’s Luxury Division for the cosmetics and beauty brand’s POS at ‘Perfumes & Companhia’ shops in the Lisbon area. The interactive app offers the public a sensorial experience that is here to revolutionize the way customers choose the fragrance, which is right for them.

The video below – the making of Sensorium – sums up how the project was conceived, designed and implemented:

This past Monday, December 13th, Belmonte’s Museu dos Descobrimentos, dedicated to exploring one of the greatest feats in the era of the Portuguese discoveries, was distinguished with the 2010 Innovation and Creativity Award by the Portuguese Museological Association for its museological strategy and content development.

Belmonte’s museological strategy and contents were developed by cultural management firm Arque Hoje, with YDreams responsible for devising and implementing high-end interactive solutions that enable visitors to interact with the exciting contents and information.

A creative mix of art, design and technology span the 16 rooms that were once home to Pedro Alvares Cabral, the Portuguese navigator and explorer, who led the armada that discovered Brazil at the onset of the 16th century. The museum has been open to the public since April 2009.

The video below shows what the museum is about:

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