Mobile Augmented Reality
Many technologies for augmenting our perceptions of the real world are reaching their maturity and point towards a day when it will be possible for people to wear or carry devices that help them to navigate and capture their environments. People with Mobile Augmented Reality devices and services will be able to capture, annotate and to share with others real and virtual spaces. This is the concept behind Mobile Augmented Reality: a blurring of the lines between the physical and digital worlds.
The price points are reflecting the new volumes of production. Lightweight and powerful new products make 2013 a very exciting year for mobile and wearable augmented reality. In essence, all augmented reality will be mobile however, we believe that those services which use the mobile (cellular) networks will be the most pervasive and the business model is much more compelling than alternatives tied to a personal computer.
What we do
We are at the cutting edge of Mobile Augmented Reality as a result of our collaboration with corporate research groups and universities which perform basic and applied research on Augmented and Mixed Reality technologies. The research projects on which we have contributed focus on topics such as the use of real time digital video and audio, our areas of expertise for almost 20 years, for context-awareness. Sensors offer contextual awareness which is then applied for multimodal interfaces and “anticipatory services.”
Our interests are in
(1) the application (use) of mobile
augmented reality in professional/enterprise products and services
particularly for the built environment and manufacturing, and
(2) the business models for companies who provide augmented
reality products and
services to mobile device users.
Outside the research community (or on the receiving side of
technology transfer) there are
independent software vendors,
network equipment providers, handset component manufacturers,
mobile network operators and other companies in the value chain
which collaborate with us for market research, business development
and management consulting services.
In summary, we are at a busy intersection, working to accelerate
the acceptance and
deployment of Augmented Reality to mobile.
The researchers tap us to figure out
who will need their
algorithms (this is technology transfer). The software and
hardware
vendors need specialists us to help them find
partners with whom to develop complete
solutions that work, and
to build the ecosystem into a complete industry (this is
market
development). We also use our market intelligence and research
to help those on
the investment side to size the opportunities,
risks/threats to new businesses or services.
Accelerating the growth of Mobile Augmented Reality
Many of our activities are confidential but we also enjoy being on the public-facing side. Examples of past market expansion activities include:
- Blogging on O'Reilly Radar on Augmented Reality topics
- Leadership roles in the ISMAR 09 conference (Mobile Committee chair, Workshops chair, chair of the Mobile Magic Wand Workshop)
- Co-chair of workshops for ISMAR 2010
- Co-organizing Mobile AR Summit @ Mobile World Congress 2010
- Host of Mobile Monday Switzerland events on Mobile Augmented Reality in April 2009 and March 2010
- Founder of Swiss Augmented Reality Meetup Group.
[top]