Augmenting reality

While Google Glass has made waves, other companies in Israel are looking to perfect the technology as well.

By NIV ELIS
cute girl with astrological sign 370 (photo credit: screen shot)
cute girl with astrological sign 370
(photo credit: screen shot)
Astriking, well-dressed man looks out the window of his penthouse apartment and dons his uber-sleek, defining glasses. Sure, he’s good looking, sure he’s smart, sure he’s fabulously wealthy, but this James Bondesque character’s true secret lies in those lenses. They are no ordinary glasses; they are an augmented reality device that anticipates and fills his every need, whether showing him the best path to drive, sorting out the nutritional value of the meals that keep him in such good shape, or even getting the lowdown on a sexy bartender he meets, cluing him into her name and astrological sign, and analyzing her voice to confirm that, yes, she is flirting back. The gadget is a dream for a man who, left to his own devices, might be socially awkward, fat and constantly lost.
Winning at life in a way Charlie Sheen could only ever dream of, the fictional archetype is the center of an advertisement meant to tap into some modern ideal of masculinity and his trusty, multi-functional glasses do not exist. Yet. The sleek commercial, produced by a company called Infinity Augmented Reality, lays out a vision for what the technological future may look like.
A New York-based publicly traded company that has received investments from the likes of former prime minister Ehud Olmert through his Genesis investment fund, Infinity AR is opening its research and development center in Israel to develop the next generation of interactive connected technology, what they hope will be “the next big thing” after the rise of the smartphone and mobile computing.
Not content with users having to stop what they’re doing to take a quick ride on the information super-highway, augmented reality aims to overlay useful information onto the world as we experience it, whether by adding it to real-time images or projecting information onto real world.
It only takes a moment with the company’s colorful new CEO, Enon Landenberg, to understand the source of the over-the-top ad. Wearing a T-shirt depicting the evolution of a Lego man and a baseball cap emblazoned with his own name, Landenberg resembles a hi-tech counterpart to Judah Friedlander’s overgrown teenage character on 30 Rock.
“Say you meet a girl and you want to know if she’s single or married, if she’s interested or not, if she’s from Manhattan or just pretending,” he says. “You can buy these abilities from me!” But setting aside the sexist machismo and misguided male fantasies, the technological vision is still extraordinary.
“This machine is so smart, I don’t know if you can imagine the complexity – to know what’s happening around you, to figure out what you want and to give you the most relevant information in the most relevant ways,” he says.
THE SEEMING inevitability of augmented reality as the next big technology builds on two trends: increasing inter-connectedness between devices, and the use of “implicit” data.
Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs calls his vision of an interconnected future “The Internet of Everything.” In it, even the most mundane objects, whether your washing machine or your locks, your thermostat or your lights will have chips that easily connect to the sophisticated technology of your phone, television, computer or tablet, providing control and information over a slew of ordinary items.
A May report by Cisco (which prefers the term “Internet of Things”) predicted that from 2012 to 2017, the number of networked devices around the world will grow from 12 billion to 19 billion.
As more objects are wired to provide and receive information, people will be able to carry out tasks once only available to The Jetsons.
But augmented reality takes that interconnected power to the next level by figuring out what you need before you even ask.
Speaking in Jerusalem’s KahenaCon convention in May, Distilled Digital marketing consultant Tom Anthony noted that search results are moving from an explicit model, which gives results based on the search terms a user enters, to an increasingly implicit model, which tailors the results based on other information, such as where you are, the time of day and whether you’re searching from mobile or desktop.
“Google uses 57 different signals about you when you’re not even logged in to try and serve your needs,” he says.
Google is clever enough to know that someone at home searching for “London Tube” is likely to be searching for general information, while an iPhone user in the streets of London is probably searching for the nearest station.
Using data on how quickly you are moving to determine if you’re driving or walking, it can decide whether to respond to your mobile search for “restaurant” with suggestions within a few blocks or a few miles.
Augmented reality adds a new order of magnitude to the implicit information that can be used by recognizing your environment with a camera.
“This company works in a field that just a few years ago seemed like science fiction, and now it’s a reality, so I wanted to be part of a group that creates the future,” says Landenberg, whipping out his Samsung Galaxy to demonstrate what he means.
Scanning it around a crowded restau-rant, he is able to find photos, tweets and status messages recently uploaded to the Internet by people in the room based on location. He is able to find Wikipedia entries for points of interest nearby without typing a thing.
“These are the types of applications that we are developing to prove that we can deal with the data, and we’re working on the ‘Grand scheme,’” he says, throwing in a faux evil laugh for good measure. While scores of applications already exist to carry out the tasks on an individual level, he says, they are too disparate to be useful.
“The problem with these apps is that they’re gimmicks; people forget to use them. They’re cute things that you use once or twice and forget about.” The problem, he says, is that the content isn’t ordered correctly. “We’re rebranding AR as Amazing Relevance,” he says.
Combining photo recognition that can identify anything from your friends’ faces to products in your field of vision with GPS, data from your social network and your calendar, Infinity AR aims to know where you’re going, what you're doing, and what you need, even if you don't know you need it. Driving to a meeting? It will tell you where to park. Have an hour to kill? It will tell you if you have a friend in the area, or recommend something to do based on your friends' suggestions.
Though it only uses data that is publicly available, whether from Facebook or Wikipedia, there is no question that the idea raises concerns about privacy. If people do not carefully monitor what information they put online – and most are not even aware how much is automatically collected and stored – they can find their every move accessible to others. Snapping a photo of his friend and linking it to an online profile, Enon says his applications can “build a profile that the Israel Police couldn’t dream of.”
Infinity AR is by no means the only game in town. Already, products attempting to redefine the way people request and consume information are in late stages of development. Rumors of an Apple iWatch are rampant, though nobody is sure just what form the new innovation from the notoriously secretive company will take. A handful of smart watches are already on the market.
Both Sony’s SmartWatch and a crowd-funded product called Pebble are examples of watches that connect to people’s smartphones, allowing them to change their music, read text messages, see who is calling or check their social networks without having to actually take them out of their pocket, bag or purse.
Information empire Google is expected to release Google Glass, its wearable computer spectacles, in 2014, though Enon dismisses it, too, as “just a gimmick,” due to what he sees as lack of user friendliness.
Qualcomm has developed an open-source Augmented Reality platform similar to Infinity AR’s called Vuforia, which can scan the environment in real time, detecting and analyzing objects and enabling people to interact with them through computers.
Part of Infitity’s strategy is to create software that separates out the inputs and the outputs, not unlike the smart watches that connect to the smartphone. “The source that gets the input doesn’t have to be the screen that gives you the output,” Landenberg says. Your glasses can detect your friend across the room and make your phone vibrate. Your phone could be doing the processing and the results could display on your windshield. I’m clearing up space in your head so you can remember reality stars,” Landenberg says. “The world is cool. We’re making it even cooler.”