The next generation of the Web is upon us now with the
advent of the Smartphone, but it pales in comparison with where we are
going. The critical step we are
experiencing now is the ability to map digital information over the physical
world, making Augmented Reality on mobile devices possible. The next steps are to provide better software
experiences and to utilize better peripherals for sight, smell and touch.
Death of the Schoolhouse
Having students travel to a physical location for learning
is very “old school.” Due to societal
needs, however, it still makes sense to bus them to a centralized location, to
help them interact and network with their peers, to provide structure to
facilitate learning and to free their parents up to contribute to the GDP. But when it comes to pure learning and
information distribution, brick and mortar schoolhouses are an archaic
structure.
Old School. Not Much Different From the
Modern Schoolhouse
The future will have us learning both formally and
informally on-the-fly based on where we are located, what we are doing, and specifically
targeted to what information is pertinent to us at the time. There is still value in learning the basics
in all subject matters. But as soon as a student shows an interest and aptitude
in a particular field, and is capable of contributing to society with a maximum
return on investment (ROI), we need to cut them loose from the shackles of the
schoolhouse desk. Let them go directly
into their field of choice and give them just-in-time training to perform the
tasks at hand. The divide between
learning and doing needs to reach a singularity
as well.
Death of the Desktop
The personal desktop computer was a huge step towards
instant information distribution. But it
too, like the schoolhouse, is on its way out.
Today’s busy society and lifestyle demands information on the fly in an
easy to use and convenient manner. It is
a nuisance to go home and boot up a computer, perform an old-school Google string
search, and then have to sort through results to determine the answer. All we should have to do is ask the question… and down the road, think it for that matter. Today our technology can convert our speech
to text, pair that with our location and current activities, reference the
internet on our behalf, and make all that “searching” for answers a thing of
the past. There just isn’t a good app
for that (yet).
Convergence of
Technology
Technology has been evolving and making great strides for
years, but still has a way to go. The
biggest recent step has been to pull the web, cell phone and GPS receiver
together into a single unit – the Smartphone.
This enabled the mundane human the ability to access a wealth of information
from the palm of their hand. But we still
have to “search” for that information at large.
The biggest paradigm shift to that has been the creation of location
based services (LBS) applications for the iPhone, such as 600Block’s restaurant
and store finder, created by Mindgrub. (See Case Study)
Convergence of Technology
Where the smart phone falls short, on the other hand, is
that the screen size is very small. The
ability to use the compass and GPS opens up a myriad of possibilities of mapping
digital content over the physical landscape, but the accuracy is still wildly
off. I would love to see voice recognition closer to 99% accurate - to
facilitate us asking our phone questions and hearing instant responses. Finally, we need technology to learn better
from us and to use predictive behaviors to feed us information before we
request it.
The Semantic Web
Another great stride in information technology is the
ability to return search results based on the semantic meaning of words and not
the literal text. Google is still the
market leader in search technology but still largely depends on string
matches. Microsoft’s Bing and the Wolfram Alpha beta are taking search to
the next level by offering predictive results such as informing a user when the
best time to purchase an airline ticket in the future might be, and knowing
that searching for “1+1=” should return a result and potentially the history of
algebra, but not other people that are also seeking the result to the same equation.
Augmented Reality on
the Smartphone
Augmented Reality (AR), like many early technologies, was
only possible in controlled settings with specific hardware and software designed
for that usage. Medical students have
long been able to practice open heart surgeries on dummies wearing AR goggles
and having the real visuals mapped over the dummies chest. But with the iPhone came the ability to put
AR in the hands of everyone. Now, using
location and the compass that comes with the newest release of the iPhone,
users can hold their iPhone at eye level and see digital information mapped to
where they are located and what direction they are viewing. Users can see content such as information
bubbles pointing to restaurants, which they can filter by rating or the style
of cuisine. They can see an arrow
pointing to where they left their car parked.
Drawings such as blueprints and building skeletons can be mapped over
the structure of the building, and real-estate information can be made
available at a click of a button.
Gettysburg – An Augmented
Reality Case Study
Gettysburg battlefield
Nearly 5 years ago when Mindgrub’s location based services
framework, viaPlace, was invented partner William Spencer and I enjoyed talking
about all the possibilities for Augmented Reality. We thought one of the best uses would be
outdoor areas that have a wealth of information available online, but little to
no means to access it when there. At the
time, Bill, a Civil War aficionado, brought up Gettysburg Battlefield. Gettysburg indeed has a wealth of historical information
associated with it, but unlike the Smithsonian, for instance, it cannot
effectively store technology onsite due to exposure to the elements and vandalism.
We have brainstormed all sorts of cool ways to teach the
Battle of Gettysburg using Augmented Reality such as virtual first-person reenactments
for gamers, video based walking tour guides for the Volksmarch clubs, and
interactive biographies at the graves and memorials for living ancestors who
visit. I have seen lots of people run
with this example, as it is a good one to point out the instant value of
augmented reality on smart phones, but I do have to give credit to Bill for
thinking it first.
Augmented Reality
Frameworks
As mentioned Mindgrub’s location based services framework, viaPlace,
was invented nearly 5 years ago. This
was when the web first became available on cell phones and we were instantly
able to see where the technology was headed.
There was no GPS or compass available and we had to rely on using GPS
dongles connected to our Windows Mobile phones for location. It was a stretch at the time to think that we
were going to get from early innovation to the early majority (so we could
monetize our product) but that time is now.
Birth of the iPhone
Apple’s iPhone really opened up the door for our viaPlace
framework - a patent pending geospatial registry and mobile framework for
associating digital content to physical locations. For the first time users readily had location
and the web available on a single device.
Beyond that, Apple made an Application Programmers Interface (API)
available that allowed programmers easy access to location information and the
Web for custom application development.
Since the birth of the iPhone Mindgrub has been very active
in creating iPhone applications and have several to date with very prominent companies
and Universities such as Baltimore’s 600Block, BlueSkyFactory and the
University of Maryland’s Baltimore County campus (UMBC). We have even been instrumental in bringing
several national brand’s iPhone products to market as the behind the scene go-to
guys for the hard-core stuff. We have created
custom maps to show users where they are in a city, in a mall, or on a college
campus. We are now starting to provide
rich multi-media mapped over the physical settings such as interactive videos
and photo archives and have a budding framework for graphing and performance
visualization. Needless to say we have a
real bright future ahead of us.
viaPlace Framework showing various custom
maps
New Hardware and Peripherals
Apple’s iPhone has been a phenomenal platform for location
based services and augmented reality but it still has a small screen problem
and does not map information as accurately as possible without including object
character recognition or more accurate location information. I was excited to discover, however, another
Baltimore company, Juxtopia, that is
largely working on the next generation of Augmented Reality hardware and
software in the form of wearable Goggles.
They are mostly targeting the bio and medical industries but I am looking
forward to collaborating and seeing how we can help bring their product to the
mainstream.
Dr. Jayfus Doswell President and CEO of
Juxtopia LLC
What’s Next
The next steps in location based services and augmented
reality are improvements in not only software and hardware, but in process and
user adoption as well. We should soon
see examples of experiential learning using Augmented Reality as more instructional
designers figure out how to utilize the platform for formal training.
We could use greater strides in making speech recognition
and semantic searches a just-in-time reality although that is not far off. Beyond that the next step will be to have
smart agents that learn how you learn and which will be a companion for life to
constantly search and deliver information to their human counterpart.
Eventually that evolved smart agent will be hardware
agnostic and will act as the information interface between a human’s neural
implants and the web.
