Attempting Augmented Reality

Recently I met with Erland Rendall (@erlandr), Davis Langdon’s global leader of Thought Leadership, and was asked if I would be interested in helping us move towards our goal of becoming a Thinking Business. Being part geek this was of course of interest,  but where to begin with such a wide subject? Things such as Social Media, BIM, Apps etc are all great advances but are already underway within our industry and business (which I will be getting involved in). I wondered what else I could bring that is a little different and so the mind cogs creaked and slowly moved into motion.

A sense of reality….

For a few weeks now I have been intrigued by the possibilities of Augmented Reality. I found out about the concept of AR on a local radio station (@dubai92), where the hosts (the ever brilliant @catboy_dubai and @geordiebird_dxb) were discussing the latest gadgets. Of course AR was discussed and was mentioned as being something that could revolutionize the way things are marketed and viewed, bringing to life real world objects through one’s smartphone or similar device.

However, when I mention the words Augmented Reality to most of my friends and colleagues, it is usually followed by a confused look and the words “What?”. This is to be expected I guess, especially in the field of work that I am in – I mean to date AR hasn’t reached the world of Specification Consulting or Design Management, and is only in the early stages within the Architecture field. But I am wondering whether we can do something about that.

Some research….

So I set about investigating this rather cool medium and whether it was being used in the AEC industry. I came across a couple of fantastic videos, which just show the possibilities of this technology.

This looks a bit far fetched, but it’s coming. But what about something which is perhaps easier to get our heads around? Simple uses such as implementing AR onto a business card seems to have its uses, and taking it a step further, what if as a graduate you could make your CV come to life for potential employers to view?

What if we could link this all through things such as ArchitectMap (check out @subutcher‘s blog, Just Practising, for more info on what this is), to compile a complete community which is innovative, informative, and just plain cool? That’s all for later on down the road, but I wondered just what it takes to implement a piece of AR.

We all have to start somewhere….

So, where has this led me? Well, I have made my first attempt at a piece of AR. I wanted to test something which was relatively easy for a first attempt, so am simply going to use an iPhone app which can recognise an image and then display an animation on the device being used.

I have therefore created what is called an ‘Aura’ in the Aurasma App (@aurasma). It’s not clever or flashy, and there are plenty of other people out there doing much cooler stuff, but we all have to start somewhere. If you fancy giving it a go then follow the instructions below. This should work if you have an iPhone, iPad 2 or Android Smartphone.

1. Click here to get the Aura.
2. This experience only works if you are viewing it on your smartphone device. If you are viewing this blog piece on your computer and therefore can not use the link, please open up your browser on your selected device and use this link http://bit.ly/ARTest1.
3. If you don’t have Aurasma installed, the link will take you to the iOS App Store or Android Market; install the app then come back and click the link again.
4. The link will launch Aurasma, and share my Aura with you (which may take a while depending on your network speed).
5. As soon as the sharing is complete, hold your device up to my Twitter profile (pasted below for convenience but will work on Twitter itself).
6. You should then see my first peice of AR come to life.

As this is a test, I would be very interested in getting feedback from you as to whether I have managed to get this to work or not! I would also love to hear from anyone in the AEC industry who is also investigating the AR technology.