Seeing how devices talk to each other

Your computer connects to your router, which connects to your modem. Your printer connects to your computer. The devices all send data and talk to each other. Nicole He and Eran Hilleli imagined these conversations in augmented reality:

The application would first detect all of the different devices connected to your network; this would include the more obvious ones like computers or phones, as well as other things, like TVs, speakers, game consoles, vacuums or washing machines. It would then locate their manufacturing data and use it to recast your devices as charming characters, spawning on nearby surfaces in augmented reality. Each character’s design would hint at the device it represents while remaining playful and open to interpretation (e.g. a character that resembles a TV portraying your TV).

The playful, cartoon-like devices contrast with the more creepy angle of a connected home.

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Seeing how devices talk to each other

Your computer connects to your router, which connects to your modem. Your printer connects to your computer. The devices all send data and talk to each other. Nicole He and Eran Hilleli imagined these conversations in augmented reality:

The application would first detect all of the different devices connected to your network; this would include the more obvious ones like computers or phones, as well as other things, like TVs, speakers, game consoles, vacuums or washing machines. It would then locate their manufacturing data and use it to recast your devices as charming characters, spawning on nearby surfaces in augmented reality. Each character’s design would hint at the device it represents while remaining playful and open to interpretation (e.g. a character that resembles a TV portraying your TV).

The playful, cartoon-like devices contrast with the more creepy angle of a connected home.

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Bugs that live on you, in AR

I really like what The New York Times has been doing with augmented reality lately. What usually feels gimmicky is used as a tool to provide scale and detail and to invite closer observation. In their most recent, the Times got in the Halloween spirit and showed the “monsters that live on you.” You can view it in the browser, but it doesn’t quite compare to seeing a human-sized cockroach sitting your living room.

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Building statues of hope in augmented reality

Accurat, in partnership with the Google News Initiative, built an augmented reality app to build statues of hope:

We live in a world awash with information. Every time we walk the street holding our phones, every time we perform a research online or buy a product with our credit card data is created and often time communicated to us. How can we make people care about a specific dataset? How can we form our own opinions and points of view on what matters to us? With Building Hopes we wanted people to take a stance on what they are hopeful for, even in a historical moment that many define as hopeless and bleak, and have them look at Google search data through this framework of their own creation.

There’s a web version, but be sure to check out the AR version if you can. You walk around your area picking stones, each representing something to be hopeful for, and the app points to you to statues nearby that others built.

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Olympians in your living room through augmented reality

Well this is awesome. The Winter Olympics start this Friday, and The New York Times published this piece using augmented reality. Point your phone’s camera somewhere flat in your room, and you see four olympians in a still action shot. Walk around them, walk up to them, and see the details.

My four-year-old got a kick out of it.

For the last Winter Olympics, The Times aimed to make the extreme scales that athletes compete on more relatable. So it’s interesting to see them go the other direction, zooming in close to individuals.

I’m looking forward to the 2022 Winter Olympics when I get to experience the events through the athletes themselves and then pick the tricks that they do Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style.

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