Augmented Reality Target Recognition

Last night I was up until 3am making this video.


Actually the video was done at about 9pm, or even earlier, but for some reason I couldn't get the video from my camcorder.  I started to wonder "did something break?"

There was this sort of ... prompting ... a real message I had seen earlier that evening which said:

 "Stop giving up."

Now what can you do with that?  Well... keep trying.  Finally at 2:30am I see the manual for my camcorder talking about "Use only a Sony cable" and after so many other wrong attempts found out I had a different cable, plugged it in.. and everything worked again!  Ugh!


Augmented Reality Target Recognition

The video was implemented running Unity app on an iPad.  There are 5 target images in the Vuforia plugin of common items.  The 3D doll that gets projected onto the items is one feature that has some application, but the bigger application is bringing in context according to which target the camera recognizes.

I had a specific application in mind, but it opens a whole world of interesting UX user experiences.  Going through the process is mind-expanding, and really fun.


Everybody Already Knows How To Do This

As soon as I posted this video, I suddenly realized "this is nothing new!" and I had some real doubts about why I should pester anyone with this technology.  Well... if that's the only way I can learn something new, then it's just part of the process.


Importing Packages Into Unity At Runtime

Because the application only knows those 5 target images I had processed on the Vuforia website, the next step seems to be experimenting with loading packages in the Unity app at run-time.  According to Unity documentation, that is supported!  So this would open up some very wide applications to at least allow some application administrator to set up their own library of recognized images.