An Augmented Reality Toolkit

Tuesday November 10, 2009

Augmented Reality (AR) is a new buzzword at the moment with several iPhone apps available. It's a simple idea, determine what a camera is looking at and add additional information onto the display. So you point your iPhone 3GS (The latest one with a compass) and it uses GPS and direction information to suss where you are at what you are looking at. It then adds information (e.g. StarBucks) over the live camera image on the screen. It's great for guide books!

But there are other uses of AR and for computer users with a camera there's the GPLed multiplatform library (Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, SGI) ARToolkit with a C API. This was originally developed by Dr. Hirokazu Kato, and is now supported by the Human Interface Technology Laboratory (HIT Lab) at the University of Washington, HIT Lab NZ at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and ARToolworks, Inc, Seattle.

It picks up images from a camera and tracks markers (square areas) where it superimposes images. The projects page lets you see what people have done with the toolkit.