A brief update on Augmented Reality
Mobile Monday at Zurich was interesting from a mobile learning perspective. Augmented Reality has been on the map for quite a while now, but at the ETH (Zurichs renowned University) we were allowed to have an upclose look at what some companies are doing.
Here is a short overview:
GBanga – GBanga is a small company which specializes in creating AR games. One of the games was a scavenger hunt where each player could collect certain items or had to go from spot A to spot B. Unfortunately, this is not yet available for the iPhone.. However, it is free and anyone can sign up. This might be a great mobile learning tool for young kids and teenagers.
Kooaba is a Swiss-based company, which specializes in picture recognition, be it CD-covers, movie posters or the like. They are now starting to do this for buildings and landmarks as well and have scanned over 20 million freely available pictures. On site at the Switzerlands renowned ETH University it worked great. Throughout the demonstration I was able to see several tagged locations through the cell phone display. Unfortunately, public tagging is not yet allowed and although the software is working fine, it is quite slow.
Junaio was an impressive software as well, which enables users to see tagged information on their display. The software seems more advanced than other products and I will be sure to keep myself updated. I especially enjoyed the fact, that social- and or public tagging is already availablee.
http://www.junaio.com/
Wikitude is probably the most interesting of all applications since it combines Wikipedia with AR. The app seems to work well, but speed is also an issue here. There are several possiblities for mobile learning use though.
http://www.wikitude.org/
Summary: All in all it was very interesting and there are many applications which could be used to enhance mobile learning. Nevertheless, the speed of most applications still bothers me. One technology expert also stated another important point: mobile displays. Anyone who has tried to read something on their mobile display when the sun is shining right onto their screen, should know what I mean. There are some new technologies coming which should solve that once and for all. Once these issues are solved, there is no way that mobile learning enthusiasts will get around AR. How long will it take? Be my guest to comment on that one…
knowledgeshift on April 15th, 2010
Judy:
I agree with you AR will be an interesting approach to learning. Just think of the simple solutions, college campus or tours. This allows the user to completely orient themselves to the physical layout. Going beyond that it will be interesting to see more complex applications being built. There is a free open source AR development tool from Layer http://layar.com/create/create/