Tag: Augmented reality »

Augmented reality apps are steadily increasing in complexity, letting users do more and more with the cameras in their devices. One such app is the new app MagicPlan, developed by Sensopia. What MagicPlan does is that it lets you create floor plans for homes simply by using your camera in your iPhone 4 or iPod touch 4th Generation. While the iPad 2 isn't mentioned, the app would presumably work with it as its cameras are 720p, just as the other 2 devices, which is likely why the iPhone 3GS is not supported.

While I recommend watching the tutorial videos the app provides to figure out how the app works and how you are supposed to use it, you basically are supposed to stand in the center of a room, and aim at the floor corners of a room, lining up the 3-dimensional corner lines with the actual corener lines. You go around the room, taking a picture of each corner, including door positions, until you get back to the first corner of the room. This creates a floor plan for the room, which you can then edit to correct any errors that may have popped up through the photography process. You do this for every room of your property until you've created a complete floor plan. There are plenty of options for a variety of rooms and specific door types to make as accurate a floor plan as possible.

The app is free to download, and it gives you a watermarked JPG, PDF, or web published version of the floor plan when you're done for free. For $4.99, you can remove the watermark, and can pay $9.99 to have the file hosted on the web for 6 months by Sensopia, so other people can view your floor plan directly on the web - this is useful for people who would want to show off a floor plan to potentially interested buyers. This app is a unique use of augmented reality to try and bring some definite utility to augmented reality apps, which have otherwise been used to enhance location-based searches, and for gaming. This could also potentially make an otherwise difficult task much simpler thanks to the advanced technology we can carry around in our pockets.

Source: TUAW

In The West Wing, Chief of Staff Leo McGarry once remarked "where's my jet pack?" when referring to the advancements of technology in his lifetime. In one sense, he's right to remark. But technology has come remarkably far in the past number of decades, especially for the end consumer.

One area where it has excelled is in the concept of augmented reality. To 'augment' something means, in cruder terms, to increase it. And one of the ways to increase reality is to increase the information that we have about reality - hence the aforementioned term. The iPhone's GPS-capable hardware and internet data connection means that it is possible to actually hold up your iPhone and see information about your surroundings, with an overlay of reality. Pretty impressive.

That's what Wikitude World Browser for iPhone does. As one of the first augmented reality browsers available, it does exactly what it should do. Just hold your iPhone up and have what is, in essence, wikipedia for reality at your fingertips. To top it off, the application is free to download.

WWB has just been updated to version 2.4 on the iTunes App Store, bringing with it a number of new features and enhanced integration. For example, a point of interest like a restaurant can now be viewed in more detail, with telephone numbers provided so that you can call ahead for a reservation. In addition, upgrades to overall speed make the application easier to use, and quicker navigation exists due to a new tab bar. The points of interest are wide and varied, with information from sources including Wikipedia, YouTube, Hertz Car Rental, Flickr, Foursquare and Google Local. The developers note that "there are around 500 worlds [augmented reality mapped areas] with 110 billion point of interests available" to date, with those numbers increasing as the days go by. One additional feature 2.4 includes allows you to search for specific places in all augmented reality mapped areas, rather than just a specific one that you might be in or near to.

Augmented reality is a massive technological step forward - imagine Google Streetview with all the additional information that you'll need. It's technology of the future available for consumer devices today. And with Wikitude, it's free.

[Image courtesy of Wikitude]