Future Now
The IFTF Blog
DIY augmented reality
"At IFTF, we've become intrigued by the recent reawakening of a DIY technology mindset, as evidenced by hackers, crafters, garage engineers, and basement scientists. A post on the MAKE: Blog today points to an intriguing intersection of DIY tech and recent IFTF research on Extended Self and Context-Awareness. ARTag is a low-cost way to add Augmented Reality features to flat surfaces using small printable stickers, a PC, and a cheap webcam. Demos of the developer's kit are free to download. From the ARTag site:
ARTag consists of a library of patterns, which when mounted on a flat surface by themself (or now in arrays) and viewed by a video camera or webcam, can be robustly identified. Pose can be found accurately and with low cost using a camera as the only special hardware. For Augmented Reality this means the viewpoint (pose) can be determined from the markers so a 3D object can be rendered so it looks like it belongs in the scene when you see it with a webcam or look at it with your HMD. A full SDK with camera and OpenGL support is available for you to develop your own AR applications!