Using Infra-Red Beacons as Unobtrusive Markers for Mobile Augmented Reality

The main two approaches for vision based mobile augmented reality systems are either those employing fiducial markers or those which track natural features in the environment to estimate camera pose information. Whilst marker based systems are relatively simple to implement and are robust they present difficulties for wide scale deployment as they are obtrusive and their size is proportional to the distance from which they need to be used. However, the alternate approaches of marker less systems present significant computational challenges, can be highly problematic in poor light conditions, and are independent of scale. In the paper we present a novel solution using Infra Red LED’s as markers that overcomes many of these limitations in that they are: invisible to the human sight but can tracked by phone camera optics; can be used in varied light conditions; structured to provide scale; and significantly reduce the computational overhead

Delivering 3D advertising to mobile phones.

Directing advertising to mobile phones currently is limited to commercial text messages, short-code text-back messages, two dimensional (2D) images, or wireless access protocol (WAP) clickable push links. All of these traditional methods do not facilitate advertising approach were consumers can interact with prospective purchases. In this paper we introduce a novel and highly interactive location- and permission-based advertising system that allows 3D product adverts to be displayed on users' mobile phones. The paper provides a thorough discussion of the system covering its performance, implementation structure, platform-dependent optimizations and suggestions for future work. With mobile phones and 3D interactive tools, advertising becomes more engaging, rewarding and entertaining and provides marketing executives with new means of directing their campaigns to a more specific target audience

Utilizing sensor fusion in markerless mobile augmented reality

One of the key challenges of markerless Augmented Reality (AR) systems, where no a priori information of the environment is available, is map and scale initialization. In such systems, the scale is unknown as it is impossible to determine the scale from a sequence of images alone. Implementing scale is vital for ensuring that augmented objects are contextually sensitive to the environment they are projected upon. In this paper we demonstrate a sensor and vision fusion approach for robust and user-friendly initialization of map and scale. The map is initialized, using inbuilt accelerometers, whilst scale is initialized by the camera auto-focusing capability. The later is possible by applying the Depth From Focus (DFF) method, which was, till now, limited to high precision camera systems. The demonstrated illustrates benefits of such a system, which is running on a commercially available mobile phone Nokia N900

Mobslinger: The Fastest Mobile in the West.

Whilst there is a number of location sensing games emerging for mobile phones, from both commercial and academic sectors, there are few examples of social proximity based games that are effectively position independent. Bluetooth would seem an obvious choice for proximity based games, although the majority of games produced to-date simply uses it to provide a quasi peer to peer connection between users of multiplayer games. This is no-doubt due to the fact that proximity can often be implied from other location sensing technologies and that Bluetooth is often perceived as difficult to employ. In this paper we will show that Bluetooth can provide exciting game scenarios that can enable spontaneous stimulated social interaction using only proximity information. We illustrate this through the design rationale and subsequent implementation of ‘mobslinger’ which is a wild west, quick draw, ‘shoot-em-up’ game using mobile phones

The role of game design in addressing behavioural change

With the increasing promotion of design for behavioural change as a means of addressing the complex societal and environmental challenges the world currently faces, comes the associated challenge of developing appropriate design techniques to achieve such change. Whilst many designers have sought inspiration from game design they have often drawn from the techniques associated with ‘gamification’ which has been heavily criticised as manipulative and only capable of addressing simplistic extrinsic personal motivations. In this paper I discuss an alternative perspective whereby games are considered a rhetorical medium through which players can rehearse plausible alternate presents or speculative futures. The consideration of games in this way is effectively extending the view that ‘all design is rhetoric’ to include interactive systems and in this paper I highlight how by adopting such a perspective enables designers to tackle complex issues without resorting to reductionist approaches

Community in Social Work Research

The University Archives has determined that this item is of continuing value to OSU's history.Keynote speaker: Dr. Claudia Coulton, Ph.D., Lillian F. Harris Professor and Co-Director of the Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio - "Community in Social Work Research"The Ohio State University College of Social Wor

Designing for the dichotomy of immersion in location based games

The interaction design of mixed reality location based games typically focuses upon the digital content of the mobile screen, as this is characteristically the primary navigational tool players use to traverse the game space. This emphasis on the digital over the physical means the opportunity for player immersion in mixed reality games is often limited to the single (digital) dimension. This research seeks to redress this imbalance, which is caused, in part, by the requirement for the player?s attention to be systematically switched between the two worlds, defined in this research as the ?Dichotomy of Immersion?. Using different design strategies we propose minimising the reliance of the player upon the mobile screen by encouraging greater observation of their physical surroundings. Using a ?research through design? approach for the mixed reality game PAC-LAN: Zombie Apocalypse, we illustrate design strategies for increasing immersion in location based games, which we believe will aid designers in enabling players to more readily engage with the physical context of the game and thus facilitate richer game experiences

Irradiated Landscapes: Journey to Prospect Cottage

How does one map a memory of a place, a fragment of time, in a way that is as evocative and vivid as the initial experience? When we prospect a landscape, we witness it as it is now; light and shadow define it, complete with its current solar exposure, humidity and temperature. As we then move through the landscape our brains process this information, leading us to perceive something entirely new. Our memory of that perception is also rewritten each time we recall it. Intended as a process of design research – based at the late Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage on Dungeness beach in Kent, UK – this essay attempts to capture the fluidity of these perceived experiences and freeze them into sited mappings, unique to the temporal and climatic experience of the observer. Centered on the production of digitally-crafted ‘perceptual cartographies’, which are designed/generated from the site, it presents an exploration into ways of seeing architecture and landscape. In doing so, the essay calls for the recording of sites and designs in which emotional responses – induced by light – leave traces of the spaces in the individuals who visit them, creating a temporally sensitive and deeply perceptual experience of that place

Curiosity, Commerce, and Conversation in the Writing of London Horticulturists during the Early-Eighteenth Century

PhDThis dissertation explores the social and literary worlds of horticulturists who lived, worked, and wrote in early-eighteenth-century London. The period witnessed not only a growing market for printed books and pamphlets about gardening, but also the emergence of the nurseryman as a distinct commercial and cultural identity. In many cases, trading nurserymen also published horticultural writing, their texts exploiting the publicity of representation both in order to persuade readers of the quality and reliability of their goods and services, and to evidence a wide range of intellectual interests and social aspirations. At the same time, increasing numbers of more gentlemanly authors had recourse to nursery and physic (or botanical) gardens and their curators as authoritative sources for their own manuals of horticulture and treatises of natural philosophy. Part one addresses the publications produced by nursery-gardeners and seedsmen during the late-seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. Through close-readings of texts by George London and Henry Wise, Thomas Fairchild, and John Cowell, chapters one and two examine how such men sought to represent themselves as polite and precise practitioners of gardening successful in their businesses, sociable in their dispositions, and curious in their approaches to the natural world. Chapter three embellishes these themes by describing the genealogy and formation of the Society of Gardeners, a voluntary association of horticultural tradesmen. Part two (chapters four and five) locates these broad arguments more specifically, by presenting a biographical account of Richard Bradley, the most important and prolific horticultural writer of the 1710s and 1720s. Combining published and manuscript resources these chapters interrogate pivotal moments in Bradley's career, demonstrating how its undulating trajectory was shaped by the opportunities and limitations afforded within the spaces of physic gardens (both real and projected), and ultimately turned on his capacity for manipulating contemporary practices and conventions of curiosity and sociability