Talk:Augmented reality
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents |
[edit] Definition of augmented reality
The TV overlay isn't a very good example for Augmented Reality since by some definitions it isn't AR at all. Ronald T. Azuma defined AR as systems which
- Combine the virtual and the real
- are interactive in real time
- registered in 3D
This definition is now widely used in the research literature. The example only fullfils the first requirement, but not the other two. -- Daniel 12:20 22 August 2003 (UTC +2)
Hermann H. Benes (Marketing Team, Trivisio Prototyping GmbH: "Augmented Reality has to be defined according to a context, and not as an abstract notion as if it was a fact of nature and life. Augmented Reality is tool which allows one or many viewers to enhance their field of view with virtual elements usually generated by a computer. Talking about interactivity and stereoscopic imaging in order to define the basic elements of what is augmented reality is making the mistake that the requirements of some applications are the rules for identifying what is augmented reality and what is not. It is actually talking about complex goals of some applications to define something which is simple and requires none of that to be it. The rules for making Augmented Reality (AR) a widely adopted technology in the Business, Academic, and Public segments are:
- Full interactivity in Real Time
- Precise and ultra-rapid tracking
- Stereoscopic imaging
- Ultra Portable and Wireless
- Full immersion experience
The term "Amplified Reality" may help those who have difficulty understanding the differences in what items are enhancing environments and those that are Augmented Reality. Amplified Reality refers to items such as color, shape, basic displays, etc., of everyday items. The painting of an arrow on a wall to assist a traveler, the display of time on a clock, a television broadcast, etc. Yes, these items enhance, or even augment our lives, but there has to be a way to distinguish the technology and Azuma's definition above is it for now.
[edit] History of augmented reality
I disagree with the invention of Augmented Reality: There are at least two groups who have published their work about augmented reality before: This group does medical AR, but they call it like that. Michael Bajura, Henry Fuchs, and Ryutarou Ohbuchi. Merging virtual objects with the real world: seeing ultrasound imagery within the patient. In Proceedings of the 19th annual conference on Computer graphics and interactive techniques, pages 203-210. ACM Press, 1992.
Look at the title and the publication date: T.P. Caudell and D.V. Mizell. Augmented reality: An application of heads-up display technology to manual manufacturing technologyaugmented reality. In Proceedings of Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 1992.
(Reply:) Well, the article states that the CACM issue *coined* the term, not that it was the first time the term was used. The above mentioned conference papers had very confidential distributions (a few hundreds copies at most, in pre-internet area), compared to the echo the CACM issue had: 120000 copies where printed, plus a distribution to all SIGGRAPH attendees (30000+) that year, plus an award for the best scientific magazine issue of the year, awarded by the american publication board that year too. That magazine issue was perhaps the most influential scientific magazine issue of the decade and started tens of research projects accross the world.... Granted, that was just when the www started to catch too, and it did shadow the domain quite quickly.
I think the CACM issue really started it all, just as Mark Weiser's paper "The computer of the XXIst century" in Sci. Am. 1991 started the field of ubiquitous computing, even though Xerox PARC had been working on the topic for about 10 years already.
In summary: I think the article is right on this portion of the history of augmented reality. Yet, it is quite clear there are two competing interpretations of the same concept in this article, which is quite unsettling.
(Reply:) Your use of "coined" is incorrect. Look it up here: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=coined. Based on the definition of the word, and the fact that Boeing researchers used the term "augmented reality" previously (see quote below), the history section should be revised.
"In 1990, a group of Boeing researchers proposed that a see-through virtual reality head-mounted display that was registered with the real world could be used as an aid in the manufacturing of airplanes by overlaying simple graphics on top of the real world. The term "Augmented Reality" was coined, and Boeing found that an ideal candidate for this technology was the Commercial Airplane Group's wireshop where wire harnesses are pre-fabricated before installing on airplanes." http://www.blu.org/cone/Notices/97-98/April/VR_Apr16.txt
[edit] History of AR is still incomplete
Although there is some debate about the origin of the terminology "augmented reality" (some people I know credit the term to T. P. Caudell and D. W. Mizell in their paper "Augmented reality: An application of heads-up display technology to manual manufacturing processes". Proc. IEEE Hawaii International Conf. on Systems Sciences, 1992) it is clear that the concept was not new by the mid 90s. It probably originates from Heads up Displays. One could argue that it was a sufficiently well-known concept that it cropped up in a number of films in the mid 80s (The Terminator; RoboCop).
I would argue that the seminal work in AR is by Ivan Sutherland who, in 1968, had built a working prototype system that consisted of:
- An optical see-through head mounted display (to combine real with virtual)
- Custom graphics hardware (to render graphics at 30fps)
- A tracking system (mechanical; register graphics with the real world)
Although this system is credited as being the seminal virtual reality system, it is the seminal augmented reality system as well. To quote from the paper: "Half-silvered mirrors in the prisms through which the user looks allow him to see both the images from the cathode ray tubes and objects in the room simultaneously. Thus displayed material can be made either to hang disembodied in space or to coincide with maps, desk tops, walls, or the keys of a typewriter."
Although I'm not personally aware of any modern day applications that build directly on Sutherland's original work, I really believe that it should be discussed in this article.
(Reply) What about the Target Acquisition Designation Sight, Pilot Night Vision System mounted on the Apache helicopter? Does this count as a real life working AR system?
Many of the military flight applications are considered AR.
I will second the last contributor's attribution. I personally believe Sutherland's system was the first augmented reality, at least as commonly cited by academics. It fits the most restrictive definitions (3D graphics registered with the physical world viewed through a head-up display). Also, Sutherland's concepts were used as part of the Bell Helicopter Company's projects of that period and thus had further influence, as can be seen in the previous contributor's link:
http://www.sun.com/960710/feature3/alice.html
However, Myron Krueger's early works should also be considered augmented reality. See
Krueger M. "Artificial Reality II," Addison-Wesley 1991.
Krueger used laser projectors, computer vision, large screens, and many other techniques to create museum-style instalations in the 70s and 80s. His work directly influenced later augmented reality systems. For example,
C. Wren, F. Sparacino, A. Azarbayejani, T. Darrell, T. Starner, A. Kotani, C. Chao, M. Hlavac, K. Russell, A. Pentland. "Perceptive Spaces for Performance and Entertainment: Untethered Interaction Using Computer Vision and Audition," Applied Artificial Intelligence Journal, 1995.
The actual term "augmented reality" is hard to attribute to one person. Given their early publication and the discussion prior to their work in the 1992 paper, Tom Caudell and David Mizell were probably actively using the term in 1990 or 1991. Separately, Thad Starner used the term in a graduate fellowship application sent to the Department of Defense in 1990 to describe the work he wanted to do at the MIT Media Laboratory (which led to the MIT Wearable Computing Project). However, Feiner's and MacIntyre's papers and talks in the early 1990s were some of the most influential in getting other researchers to use the term (and probably led to many believing AR referred to head-up displays with 3D registered graphics - as opposed to less strict view that says even unregistered graphics still augment reality sufficiently to be called AR). The following three papers illustrate their work
Feiner, S., MacIntyre, B., and Seligmann, D. "Annotating the real world with knowledge-based graphics on see-through head-mounted display", Proc. of Graphics Interface 1992 pp. 78-85.
Feiner., S, MacIntyre, B., Haupt, M., and Solomon. E. "Windows on the world: 2D windows for 3D augmented reality", ACM Symp. on User Interface Software and Technology 1993, pp. 145-155.
Feiner, S., MacIntyre, B., and Seligmann D. "Knowledge-based augmented reality," Communications of the ACM 36 (7), 1993 pp. 52-62.
Note that this last paper is part of the issue of CACM that Wellner edited! However, saying that this CACM issue is what "coined" the term and attributing the term to Wellner, Mackay, and Gold is misleading. The actual articles in that journal issue were authored by many of the people working in the space at the time, including Azuma, Krueger, Feiner, MacIntyre, Wellner, Weiser, Fitzmaurice, Mackay, Gold, etc. The table of contents can be found at
The entire issue may be entitled "Special issue on computer augmented environments: back to the real world," and it is a tribute to the editors' forethought to put it together, but such special issues of large circulation magazines like CACM or IEEE Computer are intended to gather a community of researchers interested in a particular specialty and give them a common forum in which to present their ideas to the larger computer science community. In other words, the term "augmented reality" was mostly accepted and commonly used by these researchers before this special issue.
Also of note, the current conference in this field is called the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR). Often the terms "mixed reality" and "augmented reality" are interchanged, though some may argue for a distinction between the two. Most other terms have fallen by the wayside.
I believe Ivan Sutherland is the original pioneer in AR too. See a video of his system in action.
The Reality-Virtuality Continuum would be useful here in helping with RE, AR, AV, VE, and a MRE.
(Reply) See the new page (stub) on the Virtuality Continuum.
[edit] talk on location awareness
According to me, there's a part missing on location awareness; location awareness is essential for many AR systems, the system has to know where it is in order to augment the environment in a meaningful way. - Flip van den Berg
Maybe. The projection keyboards currently being sold could be considered AR. They are interactive in real time, and they overlay CG imagery on something in the real world (desktop, for example - and I would argue that the augmentation of reality doesn't necessarily have to be tied to a single fixed object; in this case the keyboard adds meaning to a class of real world objects: reasonably flat surfaces).
[edit] Is Mixed Reality the same as Augmented Reality?
Often Augmented Reality is correctly used interchangeably with Mixed Reality, as that is exactly what the Mixed Reality in question is producing. However a Mixed Reality may also be used to describe an Augmented virtuality environment, and is therefore definitely not always the same thing. See Virtuality Continuum. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Russell freeeman (talk • contribs).
- I dunno. It seems to me that from reading the article there is a slight difference between the two, perhaps enough to warrant a separate article. --Stux 00:13, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Yes, it is the same thing. They should be merged.
[edit] Cyborg
I've nixed the "membership in project cyborg". The user interface technology of Augmented Reality has only remotely to do with the biological merging of humans and machines, and it's distracting and, frankly, just plain wrong to present this article as "part of the series on cyborgs". Make it "part of the series on human/machine interfaces", and I'm fine with it.
Jutta 16:37, 1 April 2007 (UTC)
