Ubiquitous computing and augmented reality

March 1, 2009 – 22:54

Wow! Those are some fancy words in this title. Now what does it mean? Well according to Wikipedia: “Ubiquitous computing (ubicomp) is a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities. As opposed to the desktop paradigm, in which a single user consciously engages a single device for a specialized purpose, someone “using” ubiquitous computing engages many computational devices and systems simultaneously, in the course of ordinary activities, and may not necessarily even be aware that they are doing so.”

Hmmm, not much clearer right? Well for me Ubiquitous computing was the name of a school semester I did about a year ago. For us ubiquitous computing was the ability to mix soft- and hardware into real life objects people use every day. This could be anything like running shoes collecting data about your steps, glasses gving you extra information on what your seeing or games and interactivity in the elevator mirror you look at avery day. After nine weeks following different courses on the subject, we were given nine weeks to do a project and realise chosen concepts. The concepts had to be usefull for the re-opened Luxor Live theater. Some great ideas we worked out were LED-glasses reacting to surrounding music and a control board, the elevator mirror mentioned above using Wii controllers and touchscreen tables showing you information and options to order drinks and vote for music. So what about agmented reality? The wiki sais:

“Augmented reality (AR) is a field of computer research which deals with the combination of real-world and computer-generated data (virtual reality), where computer graphics objects are blended into real footage in real time.

At present, most AR research is concerned with the use of live video imagery which is digitally processed and “augmented” by the addition of computer-generated graphics. Advanced research includes the use of motion-tracking fiducial markers recognition using machine vision, and the construction of controlled environments containing any number of sensors and actuators.”

So augmented reality is not the same as ubiquitous computing but it sure is a great example of it. I could explain augmented reality in my own words but as my english is okay but not great i’d rather show you two video’s which should make you understand both terms a lot better. These two video’s were the reason of writing this article to be honest. The first video is a great presentation of augmented reality I remembered from the beginning of the semester. I watched the second video today, it is an example of Microsofts interpretation of ubiquitous computing.

1. Augmented reality demo by Total Immersion: