Exploring MARS The Renaissance of Reality

Imagine, you're walking down the street for an evening saunter with your

family, you see an ATM outlet on the roadside, and as you direct your mobile

camera towards it, the screen annotates the home loan scheme and credit card

offers from the bank. And then focusing your carl zeiss to a distant hotel drops

the Cuisine of the Day and The Family Platter menu on the screen, giving enough

information on the prices, so that you can have a check at your wallet before

entering the edifice for a grand feast! Possible! While Netherlands experienced

the first AR mobile browsing experience in the world last year, the first Indian

city to join the list is Pune. What is the technology behind? Is it augmented,

or reality, or both? Let's explore.

What is it & how it works?



Augmented Reality, a subset of Mixed Reality, adds virtual information to a

predominantly real image/representation of the world in order to enhance, or

augment, the information the user receives. Augmented reality demesnes beyond

the domains of sight and sound and well immerses into haptic sciences. At an

application layer level, the trilogy comprises of a global positioning system

(GPS) for locating the co-ordinates by the triangulation method, a

tilt-compensated digital compass for direction and a tri-axial accelerometer to

determine orientation.When the lens of the camera is focused in a particular

direction, the image stream captured by the camera is layered with graphics and

texts, annotating the user's surroundings. The locations in the frame get

associated with virtual objects consisting of URLs which, in a way, hyperlink

the real world to the respective associated data which can be streamed from the

servers.

What does it incorporate?



The MARS architecture essentially incorporates a GPS-GPRS enabled mobile

device, the application (browser) server and content providers (remote servers).

When the user launches the application, the camera gets activated. After the

current positional coordinates of the user are located via GPS and

accelerometer, the application server  fetches data from content rich remote

servers and web services, which return files that are coalesced and cropped to

fetch the desired Point of Interests(POIs). The mobile device layers this file

as selected by the user over the captured vision to provide the user with the

desired information.

Architecture of  Mobile Augmented Reality Systems (MARS)

The application (Ford Figo in our case) gets downloaded and installed in your mobile apps folder.	On launching the application, the camera mode gets activated automatically.

While browsers like Layar and Junaio serve the IPhone and Android markets,

currently, WIKITUDE World Browser facilitates the Symbian mobiles users also.

MARS in India!



In April, 2010, MARS landed in Pune, in the form of PUNE Layar, making it

the first city to experience the significant geographical coverage potential of

augmented reality, on the Indian terrain. Developed by Upside Learning

Solutions, Pune, the POIs are linked to respective Wikipedia pages and other

related websites enabling the high end smartphone users to access information

and even directions to restaurants, buildings and other landmarks using Google

maps. The otherwise gratuitous application just costs the data charges that

apply as per the service provider to download and use the application.

With still a minimal 3G and GPS mobile market in India, TELiBrahma,a leading

mobile solution company, headquartered in Bangalore, aims at bringing MARS to

masses by deploying intARact applications through over 600+ Blu-Fi zones

nationwide(shopping malls, Baristas, Cafe Coffee Days in major cities and

metros) controlled centrally and targeting the non-GPS mobile market working on

Symbian and and even Java platforms.

We got in touch with Manoj Panedka, Business Head, TELiBrahma Convergent

Communications, Gurgaon, to have a têch-à-tête.

We took a Nokia E72 and installed the application from a notebook using

bluetooth as provided by TELiBrahma. This application installation prompt is

what you will get in BluFi enabled zones through BluFi terminals. See the

screenshots  showing how the solution worked.

MARS Global Demesne



Geographically, Chris O'Shea and BBC Big Screen, Liverpool; Simon & John and

Hugo Boss' Store, London; Tony Stark and LG Ally Android Mobile Phone, US; FIFA

and Sony Ericsson Communication, Hong Kong; and recently Wimbledon 2010 and IBM

Seer, Wimbledon: augmented reality has spanned across latitudes and longitudes

at some point of time or the other. In India, Samsung Galaxy S mobile, launched

a few weeks back, comes with a built-in LAYAR browser. On the technology front,

the addition of Geographical Information System (GIS) to the application layer

trilogy is bound to map the contours of MARS to even higher peaks. The latest

concept of Urban Augmented Reality (UAR)  provides features like 3D view of an

alternate proposed design of the already existing architecture marvel. While

Rotterdam is the first city in the world in UAR, Netherlands is soon to follow

till 2011.On the application front, IBM has recently come up with Seer(from its

predecessor beta version 2009), an application for IPhone3Gs, IPhone4 and

Android smart-phones. The launch of WIKIDRIVE, first amongst the global AR

navigation system will be another major landmark. The ARML(Augmented Reality

Markup Language) and KML(Keyhole Markup Language) can build applications to

fetch information to the level of phone numbers and addresses.

Business Solutions and Benefit Portfolio



As per Juniper Research report, it is predicted that annual revenues from

mobile AR applications is estimated to reach $732 million, up from less than $1

million in 2009. The mobile software and application developers and gaming

console developers are banking on MARS to be the technology that might turn out

to be the new endorser for digital economy.

Focus on QR (quick response) code on the wallpaper.	After detecting the code, the application hyperlinks to the Ford Figo promo video

QualComm has recently launched a mobile augmented reality platform and also

released a software development kit(SDK) for app creators.With the technology

advancing from code recognition to object recognition and now to face

recognition, the applications across business verticals is expanding. Say, an

FMCG company can utilize the technology for fraud management and CRM by

incorporating a QR code logo on the products. While it can attract customers

with offers and feedback links, it can actually clock the customer response to

offers and simultaneously keep a check on genuine products being circulated in

the market. “Tryvertising” is a fresh concept for e-shopping where potential

customers can try a product online before e-swiping their credit cards.

Similarly, job websites, e-ticketing, and e-marketing applications, etc are

amongst the numerous domains which can benefit from MARS technology.

The MARS Technology Market



Rated amongst the top 10 disruptive technologies for 2008-2012 by Gartner,

Inc., augmented reality comes at par with technologies like cloud computing,

virtualization computing and ubiquitous computing for the coming years.

But, of course, MARS, being just one of the varied areas of application of

augmented reality; it has its own share of challenges.A point worth taking into

account here is that though the technology has matured to provide substantially

accurate results but then how far it succeeds and how long does it take to reach

a point that makes it a technology for the masses, is something the augmented

world is still waiting.

Gurjot S. Sachdeva