About
The Augmented Environments Lab (AEL) is a research group in the GVU Center at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The group has been working in the area of Augmented Reality since 1998, investigating how interactive computing environments can be used to directly augment a user’s senses with computer generated material.
We use the term Augmented Environments to emphasize our interest in systems and experiences where the physical environment is an essential element of the experience, and does not merely act as a background for the overlaid computer media. From the artifacts in a historic home to the people sharing a game around a kitchen table, the places and people are what gives the experience its meaning.
Most of our work is in the area of Augmented Reality (AR), where a media (typically graphics) are spatially registered with a user’s view of the world around them. We also work in the broader space of Mixed Reality (MR), using mobile and wearable devices to create location-based experiences that do not spatially integrate media with the user’s view of their environment. Our interests lie at many levels: from content and design through interaction techniques and game mechanics. We design, build and evaluate these systems using a range of human-centered computing methodologies.
The projects in the lab are usually driven by applications or design problems; we believe that tackling interesting problems (e.g., communication between machinery and workers on poultry processing lines) and design challenges (e.g., exploring multiple viewpoints in an interactive drama) push forward our understanding of the field. To support our work, we build tools to enable non-technologists to work with AR and MR systems, such as allowing designers to use the Director multi-media authoring environment, or game players to experiment with AR in massively multiplayer online worlds such as SecondLife.
Our current work is focused on handheld AR experiences and games, mobile AR (using both handhelds and head-worn displays), the interaction between online virtual worlds and AR, tracking and sensing for mobile AR, and the use of AR/MR in the support of business collaboration.
No commentsRecent News:
MacIntyre interviewed about AR on blogtalkradio
Blair MacIntyre was interviewed by John Havens for his ongoing blogtalkradio series “Tactical Transparency“. The interview focused on the implications of Augmented Reality and how it can be used for gaming, marketing, and social networking. This interview can be heard by following the link below.
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AEL at ISMAR’08
Members of the lab attended the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality 2008 (ISMAR08) in Cambridge, England.
Duy Nguyen, a PhD student in the CS program, presented two demonstrations, one a game created by Duy and others in the lab (”Art of Defense”) and the second a project done at Nokia Research.
Cindy Robertson, a former PhD student in the CS program, presented a short paper from her dissertation research, “An Evaluation of Graphical Context in Registered AR, Non-Registered AR, and Heads-Up Displays.”
Blair MacIntyre (along with Mark Billinghurst of HitlabNZ, and Daniel Wagner of Graz University) presented a half-day tutorial on Handheld Augmented Reality. MacIntyre presented the section on design for handheld AR, with a focus on location-based experiences and games.
No commentsMacIntyre comments on iPhone App store
Apple may not have invented the concept of the mobile application, but the company’s ultra-hip iPhone takes it to a new level of convenience and ease-of-use, says Blair MacIntyre, associate professor in Interactive Computing. Source: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (read the full story).
Blair MacIntyre Interviewed on Smart City
Blair MacInyre interviewed on NPR’s Smart City, as part of a show titled “Blue Ocean Strategy“.Smart City is a weekly public radio talk show that takes an in-depth look at urban life, the people, places, ideas and trends shaping cities. In the ten-minute interview, Dr. MacIntyre discusses a variety of work taking place in the AEL, including the Voices of Oakland project in Oakland Cemetery (with Jay Bolter in LCC, Jaemin Lee and Steven Dow), the DART project (with Jay, Steven and Maribeth Gandy) and the Kimura Augmented Office project (with Elizabeth Mynatt and the Everyday Computing Lab).
No commentsAEL Research the focus of MIT Technology Review Article “Augmented Reality: Another (Virtual) Brick in the Wall”
A variety of the lab’s research is the focus of this article on the MIT Technology Review web site. The articles covers our work on audio-based AR experiences in Oakland cemetery, error-adaptive AR systems, DART (our AR toolkit for designers), amoung other things. (link, pdf copy)
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