Robert Rice, the CEO of Neogence Enterprises and blogger of augmented reality on Curious Raven, spoke in June at Mobile Monday.  His speech targets the intermediate developer of augmented reality.  If you’re new to the technology, most of this speech will go over your head. 

The video is long, but if you’re serious about augmented reality and the future of mobile, the speech hits major points about the industry.  And at 40 minutes, I’d give it a good five minute buffer if you’re going to watch the whole thing.

“Mobile is dead,” said Robert to begin his speech.  He goes on to explain it should be brought back to life in a different format.  Reincarnated, if you will.  The point-to-point communication that we use right now will need transform into an immersive, predictive, meta-enviroment and can’t just be another way to access the internet. 

Robert briefly explains the history of communications and tells us that if we do augmented reality correctly, it’ll join the pantheon.  If we can remove the excess hardware of keyboards and screens in our mobile devices and convert to sunglasses, then the computer can become a buckle or a watch, conspicuous computing.  We need to get away from the 2D mindset of flat screens and create 3D spaces where we can throw a YouTube video to another person through our AR enviroment, or send an SMS as a paper-airplane. 

Augmented reality needs more than graphics over video, Robert goes on to explain.  Should move past being even interactive and more dynamic and meta.  It should answer the who, what, where, when, why and how.  Computers have been vague points of demographic data because multiple people can use them, but mobile is an individual thing which allows us to break away from aggregate statistics and start answering questions for individuals. 

Robert goes on to talk about venture capital, which he believes doesn’t get AR yet, and smart cities, and give suggestions to developers to keep the tagging of the world in mind, so we don’t have to go back and retag later.

Overall, I have to say I enjoyed the speech, though I was hoping Robert would get into specifics about Neogence Enterprises and their recent Mirascape announcement.  And having spoken to him at length at ISMAR09 about the details of augmented reality, I thought he might elaborate on his anecdotes about furries and micro transactions.  But maybe those weren’t appropriate for MOMA, anyway.

(edit note: this video was taken back in June and posted on GA.com but its still very relevent.  Enjoy.)

I was going to expand on my predictions that Rouli had posted on Games Alfresco because, frankly, they were pretty lame (mine and not the other nine, those were good.)  But decided that there have been enough predictions for 2010.  So instead, I want to go over the things I want to happen in 2010 in regards to augmented reality.   

1. I want the Nexus One phone from Google to be untethered, cheap and make AR apps fun.

2. I want to be surprised by an AR ready HMD.

3. I want to see fun, creative AR games that are across all platforms and come at an affordable price. 

4. I want the AR inspection assist project I’m working on with Metaio to go flawlessly and for it to revolutionize the way we do difficult inspection job at Toyota and make it easier on our team members. 

5. I want Google Goggles to be a database that other programs can use for pattern recognition and markerless tracking.

6. I want to attend ISMAR10 even though its all the way over in South Korea.

7. I want the ISMAR09 presentations to be put up on YouTube so we can see all the great things that happened.

8. I want Apple to free their live video API for better AR on the iPhone.

9. I want to know what Neogence Enterprises has been working on all these years. 

10. I want to continue to make Games Alfresco the hands-down, defacto source for all your augmented reality news. 

So for all you programmers and entrepreneurs working on the latest in augmented reality tech, even though I may put up your YouTube video or link to your webpage and make semi-snarky comments about its usefulness or how its so-2009, I certainly appreciate your hard work.  Unless you were just mailing it in hoping to capitalize on the AR buzz, then you deserve it and then some.  For all of you in the former category, I leave you with my two favorite quotes to keep you going when things get tough:

All courses of action are risky, so prudence is no in avoiding danger (it’s impossible), but calculating risk and acting decisively.  Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth.  Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer. 

   — Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

IT IS NOT THE CRITIC WHO COUNTS: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.  The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again…who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. 

   — Teddy Roosevelt

Reagan famously said, “Mr. Gorbechev, tear down this wall!”

While arguments can be made whether Reagan’s challenge had any affect on the end of the Soviet Union, it still marked an important time in history.  In that same speech, Reagan referenced some crudely spray painted words on the wall–”The wall will fall.  Beliefs become reality.”  These were probably the more important words that he said on that fateful day. 

These words hold true for the current problem facing augmented reality smartphone app developers.  Beliefs have become reality for the VCs that any important AR apps must be made for the iPhone.  As Robert Rice, CEO of Neogence Enterprises, paraphrased what he’s heard, “We are only interested in deals that are… running on the iPhone….” 

The problem with this is that Apple isn’t giving up access to the video stream from the camera.  Current AR apps are either using the non-visual sensors like the GPS and accelerometer, or using single frames as a reference which make apps laggy and unreliable.  Once again, Robert Rice opines about this problem in his post–The Candy Apple Conundrum:

But I am continually perplexed by Apple’s refusal to open up the undocumented APIs in their SDK to allow augmented reality researchers and developers access to the video stream from the camera. This is a critical element for any type of visual tracking (markers, feature tracking, and markerless tracking). Some people figured some work arounds to make it work with the 2.x version of the SDK which is nice, except that this automatically disqualifies any applications from distribution in the app store. What really kills me though, is that on one hand, Apple made a play for welcoming AR applications with the 3.x version of the SDK, but only provided access to the overlay, while at the same time completely changing where the undocumented API calls were located, further obfuscating things and handicapping all R&D.

It’s clear that there is a high level of frustration within developers and Robert’s not the only one to notice.  Kim-Mai Cutler from Venture Beat talks about how, “[apps are] still being held back because they don’t have the right application programming interfaces for manipulating live video.”  And back in July, Ori Inbar posted an Open Letter to Apple. 

Why isn’t Apple opening up the video stream to developers?  Is it for the Machiavellian reason that they are developing their own secret AR master take-over as hinted by their patent filings?  Does any of this matter?

If we look at the Q2 2009 smartphone sales by Canalys, we see that the iPhone only holds 13.7% of the market.  While Symbian dominates with a whopping 50.3%.  What gives? 

The iPhone has done a wonderful job of controlling the branding space of future smartphones, but the reality is that they are only number three.  In this case, beliefs have become reality.   While I’ll be the first person to crow about augmented reality on the iPhone if they do ever release the video stream, I also don’t think we should be holding our breath any longer.  I find it sadly ironic that their iconic TV commercial from 1984 can be applied to them now.

Mr. Jobs, I am a small press blogger, but I sense the slow churn of animosity towards the iPhone.  The apps are what make the iPhone sell, and if AR takes off while you’re still sitting behind your wall, hype will drive them to a Symbian or Android smartphone that does support augmented reality. 

So tear down that wall, Mr. Jobs.  Or we’ll find someplace else to go that doesn’t have any walls.

Think you know everything there is to know about augmented reality?  Well, prove it and take the augmented reality pop quiz. 

If you’re proud of your score, post the results on twitter with the hashtag #arpopquiz or in the comment section if you don’t use Twitter.  Thanks to Rouli who helped me with some of the questions.  The answers are further down the page, so you’ll have to scroll down to see them.  No peaking!  And if you quibble with the answer, just give yourself the points because this quiz is on the honor system. 

One point per correct answer.

The AR Pop Quiz

1) Who coined the term augmented reality?  

2) Name three “reality browsers”? 

3) Name four companies in the AR consortium. 

4) What three components does AR need to function?

5) Within how many meters is GPS accurate on an iPhone? 

6) Who created the ARToolKit? 

7) Who’s augmented reality magic trick created tons of buzz?

8 ) What was the first iPhone AR app to be available on the app store with OS3.1?

9) What types of companies have used AR in marketing the most?

10) What is the yearly AR conference?

11) How many years has it been happening under its current name?

12) Where will it be next year?

13) Name a fictional book that used AR?

14) What article of clothing should you wear when making an AR video?

15) Who developed the first AR interface? 

16) What well known anime show features AR? 

17) Who owns the patent on AR? 

18) Which company did the AR consortium write an open letter to?

19) Name three HMD companies?

20) What’s the name of the AR game from Georgia Tech?

The AR Pop Quiz Answers

1) Tom Caudell

2) Wikitude, Layar, Juniao

3) Int13, Metaio, Mobilizy, Neogence Enterprises, Ogmento, SPRX Mobile, Tonchidot, Total Immersion, YDreams, and Zugura.

4) Sensor, overlay and tracker

5) 3m

6) Hirokazu Kato

7) Marco Tempest

8 ) Yelp / Monocle

9) Car companies

10)  ISMAR

11) Eight

12) South Korea

13) Rainbows’ End, Halting State, (see this post for more)

14) Pink Hoodie

15) Sutherland

16) Denno Coil

17)  No one (trick question!)

18) Apple

19) Vuzix, Microvision, Lumus

20) Arhrrrr