AUGEMENTED REALITY

Augmented Reality on mobile phones!!!!!!!!!!!

What is augmented reality???

Augmented Reality (AR) is a variation of Virtual Environments (VE), or Virtual Reality as it is more commonly called. VE technologies completely immerse a user inside a synthetic environment. While immersed, the user cannot see the real World around him. In contrast, AR allows the user to see the real world, with virtual Objects superimposed upon or composited with the real world.Therefore, AR Supplements reality, rather than completely replacing it.

Applications???

Medical

Manufacturing and repair

Annotation and visualization

Robot path planning

Entertainment

Military

AR in mobiles

Research works has started to incorporate the technology in mobile phones has started from 2000 .extensive study has been going on in this field from 2003 to 2007.. From 2003-2007 the work was aimed at introducing Augmented Reality to mobile phones and PDAs. This has beenachieved by most of the mobile majors such as nokia.

How it works???

Last October, a team led by Markus Kähäri( project manager of nokia research center) unveiled a proto­type of the system at the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality. The team added a GPS sensor, a compass, and accelerometers to a Nokia smart phone. Using data from these sensors, the phone can calculate the location of just about any object its camera is aimed at. Each time the phone changes location, it retrieves the names and geographical coordinates of nearby landmarks from an external database. The user can then download additional information about a chosen location from the Web--say, the names of businesses in the Empire State Building, the cost of visiting the building's observatories,or hours and menus for its five eateries

Nokia researchers have begun working on real-time image-recognition algorithms as well; they hope the algorithms will eliminate the need for location sensors and improve their system's accuracy and reliability

A video of the same can be viewed in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_7Yy-zQiRo