User Centric Augmented Reality

Our MOBILE USER is challenged day to day, minute to minute on his path through a set of overlapping spheres. Totally different to his focused work in front of his Desktop PC, focus is shifting and changing with his movement. His different set of goals, tasks and attentions are changing priority in his context of activity, environment or culture.

So the main objective for mobile apps is:

Minimize technical context switches in an environment of continuous changing user contexts

User Centric Mobile Apps is our concept and the Ad-hoc Mobile Ecosystem is our implementation.

Our next step is seamless integration of a Tactical (2D) map-based view and a First Person View (3D) into a single User Centric Augmented Reality app with following requirements:

• Minimize distraction through context switches with a unified AR view
• Deeply situated navigation through decision relevant information
• Natural support for concurrent events (calls, chat, navigation, search)

We do not limit AR to our visual senses, but also to tactile senses (vibrating) and hearing as well.

Evaluation of our AR project list was very helpful in more then one direction. Digging through code, wikis and discussions gave us a realistic impression what is possible today (mature / quick win)... and what is on the horizon (incubator) and worth monitoring.

First Person View (3D)

A set of Open Source solutions for Augmented Reality has been evaluated and tested. As a result, one of the most mature frameworks to support the above mentioned project plan is DroidAR.

• It is setup as a library to build upon not a project tight to one use-case.
• It contains a rich set of working demos to experience the library versatility.
• Screencast series on YouTube.
• Support for visualizing OpenGL 3D models, Pattern Recognition and building 3D Head Up Displays (HUD).

Tactical View (2D)

One of the main features of the Ad hoc Mobile Ecosystem project is to provide and share location-based information. Maps are made available through an Open Source WMS-Server.

gvSIG Mini is an appropriate WMS-Client for Android platforms and we worked with it successfully within the German Bundeswehr funded APP-6 Maker project (more on EC Joinup Portal).

Breaking news

4th of April gave us an important kick with next step of former *secret* project of Google[x] Labs smart glasses project, now called Project Glass. Read more and follow them on their G+ page. Beside all of our concepts and software, this hardware project seems to be the ideal fit within our vision.

App Development is possible Anytime & Anywhere

Android Java IDE AIDE

This free Android App is a nugget of innovation and it is a true representative for the Mobility paradigm shift.

I took it for a test ride and it is indeed a fully functional Java IDE on your Android device. With an amazing developer experience, only known from heavy weight desktop IDE like Eclipse.

Imagine the option to fix or enhance your Apps in the field.

Do-it-yourself (DIY) with state of the art Android tablets running Quad-Cores and up to 18h battery operation (eg. Asus Transformer Prime + Keyboard dock).

Where is the limit? What is next?

Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality (AR) is one of the building blocks of our Ad-hoc Mobile Ecosystem.
Find below the list of Open Source candidates from Google Code, we have currently under evaluation.

Location based

AR Browser & Multimedia Interactive Tagging (Audio, Graphic, Text)

1. armp: Location based audio streaming
2. mezzofanti: AR through text-recognition and translation
3. realgraffiti: Location based graphic marking (tagging)
4. staaar: Location based text tagging and sharing

AR Browser

1. mixare: Location based AR
2. raveneye: Location based AR, support for POI and way-points
3. android-argame: A Mixare fork which tries to support AR multi-user scenarios

Marker Based

1. droidar: Basic functionality for marker based and location based AR
2. nfc-contextual-learning: Near Field Communication (NFC) Marker based AR

AR Libraries

1. armd2011: AR Game lectures at Vienna University of Technology, showcases the usage of central AR  relevant Android libraries.
2. android-augment-reality-framework: A framework for creating marker based augmented reality Apps on Android
3. android-ar-base: Basic functionality for marker based AR (based on NyARTookit). 
4. aruco-android: Ongoing Spanish project to establish an AR library

Agility and Speed are key factors

The Ad-hoc Mobile Ecosystem is specifically designed to support disaster relief scenarios and military operations and thus it is mission relevant software.

"We cannot retreat behind a Maginot Line of firewalls otherwise we will risk to being overrun. It is like maneuver warfare, all that matters is speed and agility."(Referring to a quote from William J. Lynn III [1])

What has changed since 1940 in Maginot?

• Digital information has become a central asset in military conflicts.
• This way software has become a critical resource for military operations.
• There is an outer world, not necessary combatants, which learned how to utilizes digital information at a tremendous speed. In a conflict situation against us.

Speed and costs are the most critical metrics for development tasks referenced today.
With budget cuts proposed for the nearly all western defense communities, cost is the most urgent parameter.

But from an operational view, speed is named most often. We have to view at speed from more the one dimension:

• Inner dimension: Speed of continuous change of requirements during development and way more important during life-cycle after deployment of the solution.

• Outer dimension: High speed evolution of software outside the military realm and the need "not being overrun".

 A compilation of commonly cited requirements with no sorting regarding their priority:

• Increased Agility and Flexibility
• Faster delivery
• Increased Innovation
• Reduced Risk
• Increased Information Assurance & Security
• Lower Costs

   
Next blog entry will focus how to respond to these requirements with Open Source Software (OSS).

Attribution

[1] Lynn, William J. III. Sep 2010. "Defending a New Domain: The Pentagon's Cyberstrategy". Foreign Affairs.

Mobile Computing is mission critical

Last decades have seen several major paradigm shifts in computing, such as personal computers, graphical user interfaces, the internet, the world wide web, laptops and wireless networking.

Each of these have intensively changed the way of personal computing. Mobile computing and its new  concepts of information processing such as "anytime & anywhere" or "context-awareness" is a paradigm shift as big as any of the previous ones.

The military sector is facing the challenge of how to participate in this technological revolution. Few armed forces such as these of the US have already begun to respond to this challenge.

Today military conflicts are almost asymmetrical conflicts where armed forces meet opponents with low fire power on the one hand, but highly mobile and equipped with easy-to-find and powerful communication and information technology on the other hand.
 
Actually, the answer to the rapid pace of development in mobile communications and information technology is still a long-standing and inflexible procurement process. The result is that  communications and information technology deployed to the troops is outdated by the time of its release, and increasingly left behind the technical capabilities of potential adversaries.
 
So to meet the challenges of future missions, a continuous deployment of up to date communications and information technology must be assured for armed forces such as the German Bundeswehr.

Open Standard for Information Management

One of the building blocks of the Ad-hoc Mobile Ecosystem is Enterprise-level Open Source software that is consequently based on international standards. Another is the open standard for information management to handle the project.

WSS Client for Android

Android platform lacks of a secure SOAP-based communication with Enterprise-level web services based on X509v3 certificates and smartcards.

WSS Client for Android is our Open Source project to fill this technical gap on the basis of Apache Santuario. More technical information is found here.