3D "Augmented Reality" Signage Experiments at MIT Media Lab in 1998
Augmented Reality is a term which describes the process of superimposing information over one's view of the real world by means of head mounted display or HMD. Virtual reality, by contrast immerses the user in a completely computer generated world, with the 'real world' blocked from view. With Augmented Reality, aperson can have information pertinent to their current location or activity appear to float over the top of the world around them. Often the user of Augmented Reality systems 'wear' their computers on their body, wtih the geospecific information generated and displayed in real time as the user moves through space.
In popular culture films such as 'The Terminator' and "Robocop" show the main characters building up a schematic understanding of the world around them based on database information about where they are.
The research I undertook at MIT Media Lab in 1998 sought to address the spatial navigation requirements of people using wearable computers. Assuming that eventually wearable computers would enable users to superimpose 'signs' over their view of the real world, the question was asked: what design principles need to be addressed when fabricating virtual 3D shapes to assist users interact with the real world around them. The 'diarama' project which was developed by Karrie Karahalios made use of my VRML 3D shapes to demonstrate an 'augmented reality' system, which superimposed shapes over a view of the real world. The development of such systems begs some interesting questions.
For example:
1) How might a hybridisation of real and virtual spatial elements generate a kind of 'conversation' between them, such that the user could customise his/her actual physical migration through urban space? A speculation of this was explored in my film "Otherzone". In this film, characters wear intelligent 'sunglasses' which superimpose signs over their view of the world around them, offering 'pointers' to where places are in the distance. Icons and 3D shapes offer metaphorical means to transfer information also. The look, colour and shape of these spatial cues need not bear any relation to real world referents, they can be as customisable as desktop icons, or 'avatars' in virtual reality games.
Still from my 1998 science fiction film "Otherzone".Wearers of netspex see markers and 3D signage indicate waypoints and landmarks on the horizon.
2) How might the widespread use of augmented reality wearable computer systems result in changes to the real city? As William J Mitchell has pointed out in "City of Bits", the widespread arrival of automatic telling machines resulted in a radical re-interpretation of the role of physical banks during the 1980s and 1990s. The networks carrying financial transactions in many ways supplanted the pre-electronic physical, urban manifestation of banking - physical buildings, with human tellers, and paper and pen systems of effecting transactions.
If 3D signage, or even 2D signage and system of information overlay can alter the relationship between a person and the city around him/her - what types of changes are likely to take place?
If a system of augmented reality signage was developed which worked as well as say physical traffic lights, would there be any need for the traffic lights to continue?
I worked with Sociable Media researcher and student Karrie Karahalios on developing the signage system for her project 'Diorama". Diorama involved two comptuers, one of which was a Pentium laptop, with a small camera mounted on its lid, the other a powerful Silicon Graphics workstation.
The laptop and the Silicon Graphics machine were connected via 100 mbs ethernet connection, over a wireless local area network. The laptop presented the view of the real world via the small camera mounted on its lid, and the workstation machine generated 3D shapes as appearing over the top of the view of the real world.as provided by the laptop's camera.
The result was that the laptop computer showed both a view of the real world, as well as an array of floating 3D signs which appeared to remain in position, relative to the world around them as the user moved the laptop on a music stand left and right. The workstation was computing the relative positions of the VRML signs (which I had designed and prepared for Ms Karahalios).
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