An Augmented Reality Billboard experience, by Disney Parks, that spans across Times Square!

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:

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.

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.

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:

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.

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

Our brood across the Atlantic have been pretty busy spreading YDreams’ interactive breed of technology & design across Brazil. The latest project involves an events booth for Bradesco Seguros (the Brazilian bank’s insurance component) at Conec, an Insurance Brokers Congress that recently took place in the bustling city of São Paulo.

Bradesco wanted to turn out the most innovative and fun booth at the event. Seems like they did just that thanks to a mix of YDreams solutions that involved Augmented Reality and gesture-based games and activities.

Take a peek at the video below:

Lisbon City Hall is sponsoring a campaign to create awareness and educate primary school students about the meaning and significance of the upcoming holiday on October 5th, date when Portugal will be commemorating the centennial anniversary of the implementation of its first republic. To do so, City Hall called on YDreams to come up with a fun and highly interactive solution, aimed at children between the ages of 8 and 10, to pique their interest about one of Portugal’s most significant marks in history.

YDreams conceived and developed ten Augmented Reality (AR) collectible cards and a dedicated website for exploring the cards’ contents online. The AR-based cards, a total of 8,000 in packs of 10, will be distributed to students throughout Lisbon city schools on October 5th. Each card in the pack features a brief description of key events, symbols or ideals that led to the republic’s implementation, accompanied by illustrations and an AR marker that can be viewed and explored in an entirely unique way by accessing the dedicated website lodged on Lisbon City Hall’s homepage. Using a PC with an Internet connection and a webcam, children hold the Augmented Reality cards up in front of the webcam and watch as the respective marker comes alive on the screen in the form of a 3D model that they may observe from several angles by turning and tilting around.

Children may choose to collectively explore the card’s AR contents at school, or at home. Although the website was designed specifically for Magalhães net books, the 1st PC designed and produced entirely in Portugal, and aimed at predominantly young audiences, it will run on any computer make or model. Anyone interested in learning about the fledging Republic’s earliest moments may digitally browse the cards and 3D images online at http://cartoesdarepublica.cm-lisboa.pt/.

Miguel Remédio, YDreams Co-Founder and International Operations Executive interviewed (minute 2:36) by RTP International TV show at AICEP sponsored event at the Portuguese Consulate in San Francisco that brought together Portuguese companies and individuals doing business and R&D in the USA.

Watch the video:

YLabs, our in-house R&D lab is proud to announce the release of its YVision Closed-Beta Version for testing by a number of selected applicants.

A little over a month ago we invited folks interested in testing our proprietary development platform, code-named YVision, to register and apply for a ‘test-drive’. After a thorough selection we narrowed down the list and yesterday the version was officially released for testing.

The YVision SDK is available for download at http://www.ydreams.com/yvision; keep in mind you must be an authorized user in order to download it, but feel free to skim the page for a better understanding of what YVision really is.

Last September YDreams released Flyar, a screensaver, Twitter visualization application that used Augmented Reality and gesture interaction to enable users to see themselves in real time, inside a pc screen, surrounded by virtual birds that fluttered about or flew towards them to deliver incoming tweets. Through simple flicks of the hand, users could play around with the virtual content by “calling” a bird over to deliver a message, or cause leaves to fall from the trees.

The app was downloaded and enjoyed by thousands of curious followers over the past year. As of yesterday, July 21st, YVision Closed-Beta version has stepped in where Flyar left off! We hope you enjoy it just as much!

Karina Israel, Ydreams Brasil’s Executive Director’s live presentation on Augmented Reality (AR) at TEDxSudeste in Rio de Janeiro this past May has opened up many doors in Brazil and the requests for presentations on the exciting field of AR abound.

Today, Karina will be giving a talk on AR for an audience of 200 at Jornal Golobo, and tomorrow, the 17th of July, she will be a guest speaker at Interact 2010, an international conference on Digital Creativity. Both events will take place in Rio de Janeiro and the theme will focus on how to apply Augmented Reality creatively.

Not long ago Cisco gave us this concept video on the future of shopping:

We’ve gone beyond the concept and are on our way to making it, and a whole lot more possible