http://www.vtt.fi/multimedia/ Augmented Reality stands for superimposing virtual objects in the users view of the real world, providing novel visualisation technology for a wide range of application areas. The work by VTTs Augmented Reality team dates back to the year 2000, when we started developing virtual advertisements for live TV broadcast and, a little later, games and entertainment applications. http://www.vtt.fi/multimedia/press_releases.html#alvaropensource 23 Feb 2012 We have two big announcements for the new ALVAR release in Spring 2012. First, ALVAR 2.0 will be made available. Second, it will be released as Open Source. Read the full press release for more details. http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/ 6 Feb 2012 Meet us at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona 27.2. – 1.3, Hall 2, Booth G12. http://www.vtt.fi/multimedia/alvar.html 3 Jan 2012 As most of you may know, the Alvar libraries have always contained a time-bomb that rendered them unusable after one year of their release. Going forward with Alvar 2, this time-bomb will be removed. Since Alvar 2 has not yet been released and for maximum compatibility with older projects, we are releasing recompiled versions of Alvar 1 without the time-bomb. These libraries should be source and binary compatible, meaning that they can be used as drop in replacements. To obtain these new versions, please make a new download request and look for the packages labeled "notimebomb". http://augmentedrealityevent.com/ 3 May 2011 Come and see us at Augmented Reality Event (ARE2011), May 17-18 at Santa Clara http://augmentedrealityevent.com/. We will have a booth there showing some of our latest demos. Also, on the first day Charles Woodward gives a talk about Dibidogs in cross-media AR applications. http://www.vtt.fi/multimedia/VTT_Vuzix_Cooperation.pdf 2 Mar 2011 VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland and Vuzix Corporation are working together to bring “first person” Augmented Reality and ALVAR to the next generation of video eyewear. VTT and Vuzix Corporation have signed a licensing agreement allowing Vuzix to embed VTT’s ALVAR Augmented Reality (AR) tracking technology into Vuzix’ augmented reality authoring software. The cooperation has started with Vuzix launching its first ARenabled software product, maxReality (TM), which can be used for designing and viewing AR content viewed through the Vuzix Wrap 920 AR glasses. maxReality is a plugin for the Autodesk® 3ds Max® product. http://www.vtt.fi/multimedia/alvar.html 4 Jan 2011 Major feature release. Added licensing system to disable time-bomb. Refactored capturing system to actually allow for third party plugins. Added a check that detects the presence of capture plugins and displays an appropriate error message in samples. Documentation updates. Fixed build system on Windows Vista. Fixed bug in UKF implementation. Fixed MultiMarker implementation to allow marker sets that do not contain id 0. Fixed bug with distortion initialization in Camera class. http://www.ismar10.org/ 25 Oct 2010 We had two posters in ISMAR 2010: "Sensor Synchronization for AR Applications" by Kantonen, and "Light-Weight Marker Hiding for Augmented Reality" by Korkalo, Aittala and Siltanen. The latter of the posters won the best poster award at the conference. We also participated in the ISMAR tracking competition using client-server solution with Nokia N900 mobile phone as a client. With this solution the user can find the tracking targets using only his/her mobile phone. The phone communicates wirelessly with the tracking server which provides the client with real-time information to be used in the tracking. This year the ISMAR organizers decided to share the first price of the tracking competition between all participants. http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/events/ict/2010/index_en.htm 23 Sep 2010 Meet us at ICT2010 Event at Brussels Expo, 27-29 September 2010, Zone R1 - Smart Systems, Stand number: R1-09. Our demonstrations are centered around Augmented Reality applications with the "Dibidogs" 3D animated children's TV series. Coinciding with the launch of the TV series in April 2010, we implemented an AR advertisement in two Finnish TV magazines; see www.telvis.fi/3D. Dibidogs together with other augmented multimedia content were introduced on Nokia camera phones at Finland pavillion at Sanghai World Expo in May. A complete Dibidogs storybook with augmented narrative, new interaction styles and high end renderring functionality was published in August 2010. http://www.vtt.fi/multimedia/alvar.html 7 Jul 2010 Major feature release. New capturing system based on dynamically loaded plugins which allows for the enumeration of devices. Updated capture plugins for highgui, cvcam, cmu and file backends. Linux platform is now officialy supported. Added support for streams in Serialization class. Adapted samples to use the new capturing system. Samples can more easily save and load camera calibrations using unique filenames. Added support for multi marker setups to SampleMarkerCreator. Added size specification to SampleMarkerCreator. Documentation updates. Fixed precision handling in FileFormatUtils class. Fixed time counter in SampleCamCalib. Fixed Mutex class bug on linux. Fixed memory leak in Camera class. http://augmentedrealityevent.com/ 18 May 2010 Meet us at booth #102 at Augmented Reality Event ARE 2010, June 2-3 at Santa Clara Convention Centre http://augmentedrealityevent.com/. We will be demonstrating our latest commercial applications incl. consumer web solutions based on ALVAR subroutine library and AR on mobile phones. Contact charles.woodward@vtt.fi for further information. http://lehtiarkisto.talentum.com/lehtiarkisto/search/show?eid=1638064 1 Apr 2010 https://www.hs.fi/yritykset/sanoma-arkisto/artikkeli.do?id=HS20100225SI1KU019md&hakusanat=woodward&pvm=%23%3D20090415&alkaen=&loppuen=&lehti=kaikki&sivu=1&tulokset=38&lyhenne=HS&artikkeli=2&haku=HITE 25 Feb 2010 http://www.kauppalehti.fi/5/i/talous/uutiset/arkisto/showArticle.do?db=KKL1011X&ris=0&rid=3710&qid=0&rsi=0&page=0&size=20&hits=1 9 Feb 2010 http://www.tietoviikko.fi/taustat/article367539.ece 22 Jan 2010 http://www.tietoviikko.fi/kaikki_uutiset/article333044.ece 1 Oct 2009 http://www.rakennuslehti.fi/ 9 Oct 2009 http://www.vtt.fi/news/2010/03252010.jsp?lang=en 6 Apr 2010 Aller Media Oy published an Augmented Reality advertisement developed by VTT in two Finnish TV magazines. Readers of Katso and TVSeiska can bring an animated 3D character from children's TV series Dibidogs alive and play with it using a webcam and a PC screen. The application is available for download at http://www.telvis.fi/3d/. http://www.facebook.com/pages/ALVAR/321123088687 11 Feb 2010 Alvar joined Facebook. http://www.vtt.fi/multimedia/alvar.html 5 Feb 2010 Major feature release. Added Container3d class to handle 3d data structures (pro). Added external container (EC) versions for some Alvar classes: CameraEC, MarkerDetectorEC and TrackerFeaturesEC (pro). Added SimpleSfM class that implements structure from motion tracking (pro). Added SamplePointCloud sample that shows new tracking capabilities of Alvar (pro). Added MultiMarkerInitializer class and improved SampleMultiMarkerBundle (pro). Removed GLUT dependency from AlvarPlatform. Moved GlutViewer class from AlvarPlatform to samples directory. Added support for setting model view matrix in GlutViewer. Documentation updates. Fixed bug with export of Ransac class (pro). Fixed bug in Optimization class regarding weight handling (pro). Fixed bug in FilterMedian class when returning measurements. Fixed bug with optimization parameters in SampleMultiMarkerBundle (pro). Fixed bug with scale of VR view in SampleMarkerHide. http://www.vtt.fi/multimedia/alvar.html 8 Dec 2009 Bugfix release. Added serialization support. Added block size parameter for labeling. Added support for automatic marker resolution detection Removed sensor library Documentation updates Fixed bug in thread implementation Fixed bug with larger marker resolutions http://www.vtt.fi/multimedia/alvar.html 19 Oct 2009 First public release http://gamesalfresco.com/2009/08/09/augmented-reality-has-gained-gravity/ 9 Aug 2009 Here's the latest AR dish from Ohan Oda and Steve Feiner at Columbia University's Computer Graphics and User Interfaces Lab: an augmented reality marble game that uses gravity as a game controller. No iPhone required. http://akseli.tekes.fi/opencms/opencms/OhjelmaPortaali/ohjelmat/Tila/fi/system/uutinen.html?id=4935&nav=Uutisia 9 Nov 2009 VTT:n kehittämä, lisättyä todellisuutta hyodyntävä sisustussuunnitteluohjelmisto haastaa sisustussuunnittelun nykyiset käytännöt. Ratkaisun avulla tilasta otettuun kuvaan voidaan lisätä esimerkiksi virtuaalisia huonekaluja. Ratkaisun hyotyjä ovat sisustusmallien nopea visualisointi ja erilaisten vaihtoehtojen helppo testaus. http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/28644.wss 19 Oct 2009 Researchers From IBM, Nokia and VTT Bring Avatars and People Together for Virtual Meetings in Physical Spaces. New technology allows people across the world to interact with each other and objects like they are in the same room. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNB0_c-5TSk 9 Oct 2009 Augmented Collaboration in Mixed Environments (ACME) is a mixed reality teleconferencing application based on Second Life (SL) and the OpenSim virtual worlds. Augmented Reality techniques are used for displaying virtual avatars of remote meeting participants in real physical spaces, while Augmented Virtuality, in form of video based gesture detection, enables capturing of human expressions to control avatars and to manipulate virtual objects in virtual worlds.