During the time I searched for a new business idea for Awxire AB, I came up with the following business ideas based on Augmented Reality technologies. Plus links to related websites. I haven’t yet abandoned them all, but I feel that they should now be shared to the public. Maybe they will give inspiration to you, if they do please tell me.
For more info see Wearable Computer System
A wearable computer system installed with Linux, and just Firefox. To be able to browse the internet wherever you are, in a comfortable way.
A camera is placed in front of the keyboard. A ARTag is placed on the fingertip, a program reads the position of the finger and moves the mouse pointer on the screen. If you show the long finger to the camera, that will be a left click. Could also read different gestures made by the hand to back in the browser, or open different programs.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EyeToy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_Glove
http://www.mgestyk.com/
http://www.3dvsystems.com/
http://www.wearable.ethz.ch/research/groups/platforms/Fingermouse
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/clips/wiimote-hack-is-wireless-multitouch-tv-321329.php
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/11/hand_gesture_multitouch_u.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890
A worldwide network and parallel reality. Where anybody can place a virtual object, for example a big box at the town square, and on it’s sides webpages or movies are displayed. Another example is that you change the colour or wallpaper in your home or way not place a big tower at the top of your house that can only be seen in the ARNet.
A limited version of ARNet is only taking place in the users home. Where she can place furnitures, flowers, paintings in the home.
Another even more limited (and easier to develop) version of ARNet. The user has to place ARTAGS in the home, where each tag represent a new object that has or should be bought to the home. In this way the user can see how it will look like in the home, without moving around heavy furnitures or first buying that expensive thing. The user could use a mobile phone or hand-held computer instead of buying an expensive Wearable computer.
The user sits at a regular desktop (not computer). There can he place a virtual phone, documents. Put documents in the desk drawers. Application windows are floating in the air in front of the desktop. Either a HMD or a Projector can be used to display the virtual desktop above the regular desktop.
Terminal server/winvnc window which are floating in the air, and are connected to a more powerful computer then the worn wearable-computer.
Possible to flag some of the objects/windows to be seen by other users in the room which are also wearing HMD. By doing that several users can look at the same application at the same time, and it will be possible for everybody to make changes and control the application.
All around a closed room (Submarine, big ship, airplane, car) are many cameras mounted. They are connected to the ARray software, and the images from the cameras builds one large panorama image, which can be seen from a HMD. So for the user it will look like that closed room are transparent, and he will get a better view of the area around him.
A lot of professions are benefited to all the time have access to the latest information. For example: Security guards that get information about when and which alarms that has been triggered, and get their position on a map over the building.
Staff working in a subway to get information about next train arriving, a map over the subway net, and where each subway are.
An electrician can look at a wall, and through the HMD he can see all wires that are in the wall. The are all labeled with what they are connected to.
The user are going to do some maintenance on his car. Then he will get a tutorial of the oil-changing procedures, arrows will point on different things in the engine, and a voice will tell what should be done.
Like the gem in windows. A virtual person that the user can ask about anything, like a big knowledgebase/wikipedia.
An interpreter that can translate things for the user. Both verbal and by text.
A book system, where the user sees the newspaper/book in the eye field all the time and don’t need to hold the item.
The driver of the car has HMD, it’s cameras around the car. If he turns left or right the car will be transparent, and he will get no problem with the dead angel. The GPS is connected to the computer and the driver will see an arrow on the road pointing in the direction he should follow. The size of the computer for this solutions has less importance then for other AR-solutions.
The computer software can also display the distance to the car ahead and behind of the driver. All traffic signs will be enlarged, and the system will remember all the signs that are valid for this road. If the driver missed them.
All passengers can have their own HMD, and look on movies during the car trip, or look on GPS-connected maps to see where you are now, browse the internet etc.
This might be more useful for truck drivers, they have more dead angels. If it’s a mounted crane on the truck, that can be controlled directly from the driver’s stand.
http://www.conrad.se/swe/tp.php?recordID=853652&httpref=&ref=kelkoo&tduid=73731c521a08586f86d9eb1940d9fed6
Display the topography on the bottom of the sea, which the captain can see through the HMD.
A 360 degree camera are placed in the hook. The HMD user will feel like he is the hook, and when he turn the head he can see what the camera sees.
http://www.coolest-gadgets.com/20070531/google%E2%80%99s-new-street-map-uses-multi-angle-camera/
To minimize a shops inventory. Show a car, furnitures and other objects in a HMD and the user can walk around in the shop to see them as they where there.
You might also see the shop object with extra object. For example through a HMD or a hand-held computer the customer can see a car with other colours, spoilers, nave plates etc.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcrCrcPwAPU
All football players have small window above them (like in RTS games), where different statistics are displayed about him.
When you go to a sporting event (football, moto gp, hockey, formula 1) you can rent/borrow a little device or use your own iphone. The device should have a camera and a display. Then you can hold the device against a participant of the event, and a small window will be displayed above him (like in a RTS game). In the window different statistics can be displayed, such as how many goals has been done, how fast the motorcycle goes, the record top speed on this track, replay of the crash you missed.
Helmet-Mounted Display System for Formula One Drivers At the bottom of the page http://www.sid.org/news/archive/industrynews0210.html
If you go to a theater or opera, you can point the device against an actor and get information about him or the character he is playing.
A guiding system, where you walk around in Stockholm and can see small shows of things that happened there. Windows with text description of buildings, or voices that tell you about different places.
The future of haunted house. You walk around with a wearable computer like a commando solider in a “space ship”. Different alien monsters comes up around the corners.
10 minutes to go through the house. 100 kronor per person. About 500 per hour and device. Open 10 hours a day and 30 days a month, 150 000 a month for each device. The devices will probably not be for full time, but with a use of between 10% and 100% and 20 devices the income will be between 300 000 and 3 000 000.
A “real Jurassic park”. Instead of monsters the user can see dinosaurs. You can get information about each specimen.
Copy real objects and create a virtual copy which can be placed in ARNet.
Laserdome, lastertag and now ARWars. In a big room, or maybe outside. All players wears a Wearable computer system and a lasertag weapon. They can then go around and kill each other. Between the matches they can buy new equipment, armour, grenades, weapon upgrade etc. The equipment store can only be seen in the AR-world at special places. When you look at yourself or another player you can see the weapon they have bought in the AR-world (as a layer over the weapon they wear). You will also have a map over ther war-zone, where you can see all your co-players. A team-leader can set up checkpoints where different players should go. He might also call in a radar which will expose the enemies for a short period. (Think Battlefield from Dice)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPYy5L7Qwz4
Every player will have a pipboy on theirs arm (an IPOD?), like in the game fallout.
A stand in which a man will be hanging in wires, he will also be connected to a HMD. Then he can run around and ply FPS like games in this reality. If he get a hit, he will be drawn backwards.
A simpler version would be that the player are in a small room wearing a HMD, and some kind of weapon. Where he can shoot monsters.
Sell the units for 100 000, 30 for each game, 10 games per hour, 10 hours a day, and the game reaches break even after 33 days.
A CAD program where the architect can walk around in his creation in a 1:1 world. Make changes in the creation, get up menus in the visual field.
A room that will act as a holographic room, where the user can experience different things. Maybe look at a movie from different angels, maybe act in the movie.
A SimStim is a fictional creation by William Gibson in Neuromancer. It let’s a user ‘tap in’ to another users sensory input, but not have any control over them, and experience everything that the other user are experiencing, seeing, hearing and feeling.
In our version we let an actor be motion captured. Then the movie will be replayed in a hydraulic connected stand, which will move the users body around, and let him see what the actor did feel. Maybe the actor did parachute, or did drive a formula one car.
This can also be used in real time. The “passenger” can see what the actor does, and help him to do what he is supposed todo. With a “mouse-pointer” the passenger can point on different things in the actors view field (he wears a HMD).
An imaginary friend is following the user when he is our walking, and will react on things the user are doing.
http://www.cs.unc.edu/~raskar/Office/sketch.gif
A projector is showing what cameras in another office are filming on the wall in your office. This will give the feeling that both offices are the same office, even though they might be in different parts of the world.
Head-position tracking with webcam. A webcam reads the position of the head and will move the mouse pointer in the direction the head are looking.
A standard pinball game, where all the objects in the game are projected by a projector, like http://www.mlab.uiah.fi/~kkallio/mr-pong/. Possible to load the pinball with different levels.
The GUI can look like the blue transparent keyboard and screens that are used by UEF in the Supreme Commander cut scenes.
Control an RC robot with HMD and computer gloves. If the user turns his head, the camera on the bot will turn. If the thumbs are hold against the hand, two arms on the robot will be controlled. If the hand are formed into a fist, the legs/wheels are controlled. http://teknik360.idg.se/2.8229/1.196355/liten-robot-tar-harda-smallar
Point the AR-camera against an object and get information about that object.
http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Future-of-Internet-Search-Mobile-version/59175br/>
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/09/09/tc50-sekai-camera-for-social-tagging-on-the-iphone/br/>
http://enkin.net
http://se.youtube.com/watch?v=rf-WvMXC29U&feature=channel_page
http://t360.idg.se/2.8229/1.210535/virtuell-brandovning
http://vresources.org/articles/vre_articles/analyhmd/analysis.htm http://www.ainformatik.fh-trier.de/~schneider/papers/graz.pdf http://wearables.unisa.edu.au/projects/ARQuake/www/papers/index.html http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/person/rekimoto/papers/apchi98.pdf http://mi.eng.cam.ac.uk/~gr281/outdoortracking.html
http://www.polhemus.com/?page=Motion_Fastrak http://www.ascension-tech.com/realtime/virtualreality.php
http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~gk/publications.html (nice) http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ajd/software.html(nice) http://www.openvidia.org/screenshots.shtml http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/documentation http://www.openillusionist.org.uk/documentation/doku.php?id=contents http://www.openillusionist.org.uk/documentation/doku.php?id=example:fishtank http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/r.freeman/demos/demos.htm http://www.cv.iit.nrc.ca/research/ar/artag http://studierstube.icg.tu-graz.ac.at/handheld_ar/artoolkitplus.php http://mxrtoolkit.sourceforge.net http://technabob.com/blog/2008/08/16/artoolkit-augmented-reality-iphone http://www.digilab.uni-hannover.de/docs/manual.html http://www.talula.demon.co.uk/allegro/index.html http://openvidia.sourceforge.net/screenshots.shtml
http://www.csc.kth.se/~alx/ http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/awilson http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/benko/projects.html http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~thad/index.htm
http://www.t-immersion.com http://www.space3dsolutions.ch http://www.camtech.ntu.edu.sg/projects/projects.html http://www.metaio.com/ http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=96735 http://technabob.com/blog/2008/12/17/mini-augmented-reality-ads-hit-newstands http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=96735 http://www.beetagg.com/prices/
http://microvision.blogspot.com http://microvision.sdh.cx/ http://gamesalfresco.com/2008/05/13/top-10-augmented-reality-engines-that-will-ignite-a-new-era-of-video-games/ http://www.redwoodhouse.com/wearable/ http://linuxdevices.com/ http://about.eyetap.org/fundamentals/future.shtml http://www.redwoodhouse.com/wearable/index.php?module=pagemaster&PAGE_user_op=view_page&PAGE_id=3&MMN_position=3:3 http://www.google.se/search?q=wearable+computers&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=com.ubuntu:en-US:unofficial&client=firefox-a http://about.eyetap.org/ http://wearcam.org/ http://www.kth.se/gemensamt/1.15656?cx=007739532553414964846%3Annnfexlcq9w&cof=FORID%3A11&l=sv_SE&q=wearable&sa=S%C3%B6k#1047 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann http://www.yankodesign.com/page/2/ http://dvice.com/ http://gamesalfresco.com http://www.augmented.org/blog/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality http://www.dirkreiners.com/ISMAR06Demos/#Demo_1 http://www.hitlabnz.org/route.php?r=movie-list http://www.eyetap.org/research/medr.html http://www.eyetap.org/~fungja/ http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/ActiveVision/Themes/index.html(lots of papers on AR) http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/%7Epas/Publications/index.html http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ajd/publications.html(Andrew Davison publications) http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/ActiveVision/Publications/davison_etal_ismar2003/davison_etal_ismar2003.pdf http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/ActiveVision/Publications/williams_etal_icra2007/williams_etal_icra2007.pdf http://www.tinmith.net/research.htm http://www.augmented-reality.org/ http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1198711&coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=12496974&CFTOKEN=46884470 http://portal.acm.org/results.cfm?coll=GUIDE&dl=GUIDE&CFID=12496974&CFTOKEN=46884470 http://www.media.mit.edu/wearables/lizzy/wearlinks.html http://www.se.rit.edu/~jrv/research/ar/index.html http://www.augmented.org/blog/ http://www.antelopetech.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positioning_system http://ismar08.org/wiki/doku.php?id=program http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CyberCode http://marisil.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_Reality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubiquitous_computing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wearable_computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_tracking http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Machine_vision http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiduciary_marker http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Match_moving http://www.t-immersion.com/en,partners,view-partner,31,EU.html http://future.wikia.com/ http://future.wikia.com/wiki/Cyborg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg#see_also http://www.merl.com/projects http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybernetic http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_zombies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_game_bot http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_Reality#See_Also http://research.microsoft.com/apps/dp/pr/projects.aspx#p=1&ps=36&so=1&sb=&fr=&to=&fd=&td=&rt=|47198&f=a&a=&pn=&pa=&pd= http://digital.venturebeat.com/2009/09/15/which-augmented-reality-startups-are-most-ready-for-market-we-rank-them/ http://www.pinktentacle.com/2008/03/cyber-goggles-high-tech-memory-aid/ http://gamesalfresco.com/2008/12/14/2008-wrap-up-top-10-milestones-in-augmented-reality/ http://gamesalfresco.com/2008/04/16/10-best-augmented-reality-devices-that-will-reinvent-mobile-video-games/?referer=sphere_related_content http://gamesalfresco.com/2008/12/14/2008-wrap-up-top-10-milestones-in-augmented-reality/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulated_Reality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborg http://marisil.org/?02_development/05_demo ((Kul AR example, hand interface) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPvo2HWY9BA(AR-tennis på mobil) http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/person/rekimoto/uist95/uist95.html http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0006378C-CDE1-1CC6-B4A8809EC588EEDF http://www.a-rage.com/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberpunk http://perso.orange.fr/fabien.besnard/pdfrefut.pdf http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=EmmanuelMFr http://www.t-immersion.com/video_gallery/main.asp?idf=a0# http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARQuake http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ajd/ http://future.wikia.com/wiki/Augmented_reality http://www.mlab.uiah.fi/~kkallio/mr-pong/ http://www.mixedrealitylab.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=blogsection&id=6&Itemid=36 http://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtorrone/sets/1710794/comments/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_reality http://www.csl.sony.co.jp/person/rekimoto.html http://www.cs.unc.edu/~raskar/Office http://www.cs.unc.edu/~andrei/ http://museiteknik.blogsome.com/category/08-vr-augmented-reality/