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 
Since 2000 Augmented Reality (AR) has been one of YDreams’ technological focuses. We believe that this technology can be very useful to design groundbreaking interactive experiences and become a real game-changer in the way we use technology everyday.
Although we’ve been working in the field for some years, most recently AR has been extremely hyped as the next big thing and is finally a target of public attention. VCs are eager to invest, brands perceive a real market value and better technology platforms are being announced everyday.
The proof to all of this is that this year a group of companies decided to organize the first commercial Augmented Reality Event: ARE 2010. The conference gathered the most important players to exchange ideas, promote their products and showcase their latest tech breakthroughs. YDreams was invited to participate and we setup a showcase booth, did two public talks and participated in the Auggie demo awards.
Bruce Sterling interacting with YDreams' demo
The feedback from people was excellent. It was good to observe that all of the companies understand the importance of talking instead of turning our backs on each other. We all want the technology to grow in a sustainable way and more then selling and promoting ideas at an event like this, everyone wanted to discuss issues like potential markets, standards, user-experience or any other multiple good practices. It’s great to observe diversity and how everybody is thinking about AR from different perspectives.
We’ve come a long way since the days when we interacted with computers Using solely Command Line Interfaces (CLI) and later Graphical User Interfaces (GUI). There is real hope that the new wave of Natural User Interfaces (NUI) will provide a much more natural way for interacting with computers that will draw upon paradigms of the surrounding world. The users will have lower adaptation thresholds to computers and these will evolute to become more and more efficient for daily tasks. AR will definitely play an important role in this revolution, because ultimately it is trying to merge the real and the virtual in a seam less manner.
As for the event, we received very good feedback for our work at YDreams. People understand that we are not only concerned about technology, but also on how to develop good interaction design, where “content is king” and “clever is better than wow”.
We are also very proud to announce that we won the Auggie demo competition, where we showed our latest demo using Canesta’s technology. We clearly stated that it was not a product demo but a conceptual tech demo. One that shows how we’d like to think about the future of this technology: a perfect combination of NUI and AR, that will help democratize the future of computing by providing intuitive and engaging forms of interaction.
Ori Inbar hands Ivan Franco YDreams Auggie Award
Finally we’d like to thank the ARE 2010 sponsors and organizers and all of the people we met in the last days. It was a real joy to see us all come together with one common purpose.
Cheers
Ivan
A group of Augmented Reality (AR) industry leaders have gotten together to organize the first ever AR Industry event on June 2 – 3, in Santa Clara, U.S.A. The event, which will focus on industry and practice, will include keynote speakers like Bruce Sterling, reputed fiction writer and leading AR thinker, amongst others.
In the wake of YDreams and Canesta’s recent announcement to partner ‘to take Augmented Reality mainstream’, we couldn’t possibly miss this event, so our own Ivan Franco, YDreams R&D Director, will be on hand as an event speaker to talk about how he feels ‘augmented reality will change the way we market and use products, communicate and entertain ourselves, and how together with Canesta, we look forward to making augmented reality a part of everyday life.’
“Augmented reality will change the way we market and use products, communicate and entertain ourselves,” said Ivan Franco YDreams´ R&D Director. “But, to date, implementing augmented reality solutions has only been possible with very specialized techniques. By working together with Canesta, we look forward to making augmented reality a part of everyday life.”
YDreams has been working on Natural User Interfaces (NUI) for more than 9 years for some of the largest corporations in the world. To do this, the company has developed a sophisticated proprietary software platform, combining multiple advanced technologies such as computer vision, physics simulation, artificial intelligence and several others.
“One of the most difficult aspects of designing NUI applications has been to create a sense of real world interactions. We envision consumers naturally browsing through digital catalogs, adding to the user experience of ecommerce or being inside movies, delivered by IPTV platforms.”
Until now Augmented Reality has delivered limited applications to the general public, mostly offering 3-D objects on top of visually obtrusive markers. By using Canesta’s 3-D vision sensors, YDreams applications can do real-time capture of any object in 3-D, without the aid of any special markers or enhancements. “This completely changes the scope of where and how augmented reality can be used, said Franco.
“YDreams is among the world’s leading organizations in developing augmented reality experiences,” said Jim Spare, president and CEO of Canesta. “By combining our mass market 3-D input sensors with YDreams’ expertise, we will see broad uses of these formerly very specialized applications. This will change how immersive and realistic so many kinds of communications and interactions will become.”
A video of a demo can be viewed on YDreams’ official YouTube channel and it will be possible to experience the technology live at the ARE2010 event (augmentedrealityevent.com) on June 2-3, in Santa Clara, CA.
This past March, Vale and Rio de Janeiro’s Archdiocese began work to restore and preserve the city’s iconic Christ the Redeemer statue.
To celebrate the initiative Vale and the Archdiocese are giving people from around the world the chance to win a little piece of the statue, and also developed a hot-site to promote the monument’s restoration called ‘Para Sempre Cristo Redentor’, which includes an Augmented Reality (AR) component developed by YDreams.
The technically improved AR marker, printable via the website, features an additional bonus; as visitors hold the AR marker up in front of a webcam specific points of interest are displayed on the virtual 3D statue. By clicking the mouse over each point, visitors can access detailed information about each one.
Furthermore, the YDreams app automatically detects whether the computer being used to navigate the site has a a webcam or not. If not it adapts by enabling users to rotate the 3D model using a mouse. In addition, it automatically displays a model of the monument with hotspots, if the user does not have the compatible version of Flash installed.
To explore Christ the Redeemer Statue using YDreams AR, click HERE.
About a month ago we cued you into the Skol Sensation event in São Paulo, Brazil, where YDreams would be debuting their first augmented reality t-shirts. In case you didn’t make it to the event check out the video below to see what the experience was all about:
YDreams has been working on natural user interfaces (NUI) for around 9 years. We’ve been using primarily web-cameras for the detection of people and objects, as these are non-intrusive and are a very rich multi-vector sensor.
In the beginning each new application was a copy-paste of source from the previous projects plus, all the customization code and a few more features. As you can imagine, maintenance was a nightmare. From very early on, we felt the need to have a reusable development framework. It would allow us to take less time developing the applications, make them more robust and leave us time to keep innovating. As a result, we have successfully deployed hundreds of applications for our customers, which you can find in museums, stores, events and movie theaters.
The resulting framework also allows us to share our knowledge across the development process. We have great people that are very good at different areas of expertise but we cannot have all of them working on every project. Their knowledge is added to the framework to be used by others. It includes multi-threading, image processing, tracking, 3D real-time graphics and physics, artificial intelligence, Free Frame plugins, Flash integration into 3D graphics, USB, FireWire and IP (Ethernet) video cameras, Microsoft Surface support, etc.
The platform is used in almost all our interactive applications and recently was used on the robots we created for Santander. The platform allowed us to have a 3D simulation of their behaviors even before we had the physical robots. The exact same code that was used in the simulator is now running in the robots themselves.
We recently partnered with Canesta and added support for their time-of-flight depth-sensing video cameras. These cameras can detect the distance of the real objects to the camera.
We already had interactive applications combining real and virtual in real-time. Now it is also registered in 3D, fully complying with the augmented reality definition by Azuma.
This is just one more feature added to many others in the framework. Creating the demo was very simple. Its objective was to show the capabilities of the camera and also perform the first usability tests. We wanted to know how users would perceive the “invisible” 3D objects and what type of interactions are possible. It has been a big success with all the users.
Visit our booth at ARE2010 to try this demo yourself and get more details on our framework.
Ivan Franco, the Portuguese company’s I&D Director was invited to take part in three leading international events: Emerging Communications (eComm), and Screen Media Expo, dedicated to the telecom and mobile communications, and digital signage industries respectively, and the Augmented Reality Event (are2010), the first global event for advancing the business of augmented reality
Ivan Franco will showcase some of YDreams’ most groundbreaking advances in Augmented Reality technology that will, in a very near future, enable us to manipulate 3D structures, drive virtual cars in a real-time sports event, or interact directly with contents on a movie screen. All of these amazing applications will depend on a number of technology and design capabilities, which Ivan will explore in his talks.
The first of the events, eComm, will take place at the San Francisco Airport Marriott (USA) April 19-21. Ivan’s session entitled Advancing AR – Beyond Labels is scheduled for April 21st at 10:05 a.m. Up next is the Screen Media Expo at Earls Court in London, May 5-6, where YDreams will mark its presence at the Futurology sessions, dedicated to looking into the technologies, approaches and methods that will shape the screen media and out of home markets in the next 1,000 days. Rounding things off is Ivan’s participation in are2010, the inaugural event dedicated to advancing the business of augmented reality, held at Santa Clara Convention Center (USA) June 2-3.
If you are planning on attending this year’s Skol Sensation Electronic Music event in São Paulo, Brazil, expect to run into some very cool Augmented Reality (AR) experimentation by YDreams. To do so you’ll need an AR Tee, encoded with special markers. The tees (see below) are already on sale at five shopping centers in São Paulo (city); stop on by one of the malls to see what its all about or pick one up! In the meantime, here’s a preview (see YouTube Video as well.)
AR Tee featuring encoded marker
Knee-high Ferrari-Red robots are probably the last thing you’d expect to find in a serious & conservative environment like a bank. Yet there they are. Santander Group came to us about a year and a half ago asking for ‘something unexpected that people hadn’t seen before’ for their Visitors Center at ‘Ciudad Grupo Santander’, the group’s financial campus and HQ on the outskirts of Madrid.
The already awesome glass cube that is the gateway to the center and campus, has the little droids welcoming and guiding visitors to their desired destinations, but it doesn’t stop there. Digital ivory climbs the hi-res, LED paneled columns located at the entrance and further into the center a large scale model of the city that uses Augmented Reality, and a 12-meter tactile wall offers visitors an impactful and memorable way to explore the group’s history and global presence.
Enough talk, let’s meet the droids 
Our own Antão Almada (Strategic Software Development Director) gave a very detailed talk at Universidad de Extremadura for a course on the international development of videogames using open source software.
The video presentation offers up an extensive compilation of Augmented Reality applications and how they are developed, amongst others.
Part One:
Realidad Aumentada (1/2) from GEA on Vimeo.
Part Two:
Realidad aumentada (2/2) from GEA on Vimeo.
Recently YDreams partnered with North American firm Canesta to produce its latest Augmented Reality 3D demo for CES 2010 in Las Vegas.
Portuguese TV program ‘Futuro Hoje’, hosted by Lourenço Medeiros, dedicated to covering the latest technology has to offer, visited the company to see for themselves what we were up to. More in the video below:
I had a great time at the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 2009 (ISMAR09). I met lots of amazing and smart people. It’s great to see the faces and talk to people I’ve been following on blogs, twitter and videos.
I’m an engineer so I like to know what makes AR “tick” but, nowadays I’ve been more interested in the interaction side of AR. The first couple of days I attended the “Science and Technology” sessions but, on the last two days, I decided to check the “Arts, Media and Humanities” sessions.
My first reaction to the “Arts, Media and Humanities” sessions was that they had little to do with AR but, I had a great time. One thing artists do very well is question the system.
I had the same feeling about the keynotes. They were great and presented by very interesting people but, were they related to Azuma’s AR definition? At the first glance, they weren’t:
Mark Mine (Walt Disney Imagineering) – Showed how a make believe world is done. (I had the chance to ride all the attractions of “Future World” at Disney Epcot and it is AWESOME.)
Natasha Tsakos (Up Wake) – Did a performance in synch with projected videos. (I did enjoy the show and had the pleasure to talk to her. She not only did the keynote but also participated in the conference and seamed honestly interested on its technological side.)
Pattie Maes (MIT Media Lab) – Presented the famous “sixth sense” project. (Some people argue that it’s not AR.)
Was the ISMAR09 organization wrong to bring these people or was it like an artist questioning the AR state of the art?
Azuma’s AR definition is correct and I agree with it from the point of view of a computer vision scientist but, is there AR beyond it?
“Sixth sense” involves a projector just like YDreams’ interactive floor projections. In the following video you can see “Virtual Garden”, one of the first applications we created.
I recently wrote about what technically Augmented Reality (AR) is all about and, this time, I’d like to express my opinion on the user experience and interactivity (or lack of it) of current AR applications.
Although AR has been around for a long time, its applications have been limited to controlled spaces and are usually costly. Only recently, thanks to the rapid evolution of computers and cellular phones, the general public has had the chance to try it out.
The release of FLARToolKit, an open-source port of ARToolKit to AS3, made this technology available to any Flash developer. It all started with GE’s “plug into the smart grid” and since then everybody is doing it. Unfortunately, most of these applications only show an object floating on top of a marker. This prompted Anatoly Zenkov to create the following sarcastic “Me too!” video:
Me too (doing some AR stuff)! from Anatoly Zenkov on Vimeo.
This raises the big question, what does augmented reality add to the current interfaces and user experience? From the online AR applications I’ve seen, not much. Check out the presentation of John Mayer’s AR video clip at the Adobe MAX 2009. Really cool, for 5 minutes. Notice that the presenter, although enjoying it and smiling, has to change hands holding the marker. Arms become heavy after a little bit in that position. Moving the marker, moves the virtual camera, allowing to see the scene from different points of view. That can also be done with a mouse, like in Street View of Google Maps. The frame rate is awful. Flash brought us back 20 years on 3D programming…
Mobile AR applications suffer from these same problems. What does it add compared to the oriented map displayed by the Maps Ap with pins for points of interest?
On the map I can better visualize distances and best routes. It’s a bit like comparing analog and digital speedometers. When looking at the pointer of an analog speedometer, even at a glimpse, it’s possible to see, current value, relative position to minimum and maximum values, rate of acceleration, etc. The digital meters are cool but most cars have the analog meters…
The user’s position when using mobile AR causes not only the “heavy arms” problems but also, like Supert3d mentions on Twitter, “using an augmented reality app in public makes me look like a real creep. Trying to see tube stations turns into pervy guy videoing girls”.
I don’t want it to sound like AR is useless. It’s quite the opposite. It’s just that, although the concept exists for a long time, real world applications are still in their infancy.
Virtual reality went through this same process in the late 90’s. It failed to deliver most of the promises but it’s still used where it makes sense. Let’s see where AR will fit in…
YDreams is also following this quest based on our experience in this and other fields. We were pioneers in the development of maps for mobile phones, one of the first location-based games for mobile phones, 140 versions of the Cristiano Ronaldo game to make sure it would run on most mobile phones, etc. And we’ve had our share of successes and failures…
There is a couple of in-depth articles about interaction design in augmented reality that I suggest reading: “Inside Out: Interaction Design for Augmented Reality” by Joe Lamantia, and “Enhancing User Interaction With First Person User Interface” by Luke Wroblewski.
Augmented Reality (AR) has been all over the web recently, but is everybody talking about the same thing? Is everybody talking about the whole scope of AR or just a subset? Even inside YDreams we disagree on some of this…Wikipedia, while not the holder of the ultimate truth, is a good place to start from. The AR definition, as of 9/30/2009 15:11 (UTC), is the following:
“Augmented reality (AR) is a term for a live direct or indirect view of a physical real-world environment whose elements are merged with-, or augmented by virtual computer-generated imagery - creating a mixed reality. The augmentation is conventionally in real-time and in semantic context with environmental elements, [...]. With the help of advanced AR technology (e.g. adding computer vision and object recognition) the information about the surrounding real world of the user becomes interactive and digitally usable.”
Well, I agree with this definition even though it might be prone to several interpretations. I’ve highlighted the parts I think are important and I’m going to explain my interpretation.
António Câmara will be one of the featured speakers at this year’s addition of PICNIC, underway in Amsterdam from the 23rd to the 25th of September.
António Câmara´s presentation, focusing on Augmented Cities, will explore how Augmented Reality (AR) as a platform can bring new life to cities using a ‘Powers to Ten’ approach: Augmented Reality used on a micro-scale to visualize the intricate workings of utility networks; at an intermediate scale using virtual sightseeing units, and other digital signage; and at the macro-scale with large scale interactive projections.
This however will not be YDreams first visit to PICNIC Amsterdam. The company was represented by Eduardo Dias, company co-founder, at the event for the first time back in 2007; Eduardo Dias, along with NY-based Brand Experience Lab’s (BEL) David Polinchock, gave a presentation about the future of Augmented Reality in Advertising. The meeting of ideas and strategies later led to a partnership with BEL and the creation of Audience Entertainment, a joint-venture to deliver interactive videogames for theaters, stadiums, music venues and others around the globe. The company’s work in AR presented at PICNIC ‘07 also caught the attention of the Economist giving way to an article in their Technology Quarterly December 2007 edition.
PICNIC is a unique, three-day festival and inspiring conference complimented by a set of networking events and hands-on technology experiences for top creatives and innovation professionals in business, technology, new media, entertainment, science and the arts.
The event draws a wide audience, from heads of business, government leaders, marketers, artists, designers, producers, investors, scientists and innovators.
For more info: http://www.picnicnetwork.org/page/20753/en
For more information about the company, visit:
Enquiries and opinions are welcome at:
pr(at)ydreams.com
