Location based Augmented Reality

Application of Location based Augmented Reality, in our opinion, is going to change the world.

The founder has obsessed over AR and 3D information for a while, forming this domain about two decade ago, and more recently founded 3D-I Inc. Simply because it has so many practical applications that would help us enormously. It is a world changing technology.

What is Location based AR?

First we need to understand what AR is. AR uses geometry computing algorithm to make a spatially aware representation of the world that it perceives. There are multiple ways for computer vision perceives the world, the most accessible on mobile devices is via the camera. There are more advanced techniques out there such as multiple cameras (stereoscopic vision), (active scanning with laser or radar).

Reality Part

As the device camera is moved around an algorithm finds geometric fix points thus becomes spatially aware. A single camera cannot become spatially aware from a single image. But as it perceives the world from different points of view it starts understanding the geometry around it.

Augmented Part

As the device becomes spatially aware, we can augment or enhance the reality, thus adding the information component to reality. For instance by adding geometry such a building, virtual people, or whole 3d scenes. The world is 3d reality and augmented portion is added 3d information. Thus 3d-i

Location Part

Also known as geolocation, because it is the location coordinate anywhere on the planet. This is the real holy grail of this technology. With the addition of location information (which is hard to accomplish). The device becomes aware of what it observes in relation to the real physical location. Now rather than placing an arbitrary 3d scene in device reality, you can put a building that has not been built at the location you want to build it. The geometry that the device constructs becomes relevant to other users as well, as you have a common coordinate system. Enabling networked devices to share their relevant location through walls or buildings. The applications are limitless, and it will become an ultimate map of the world.

Other Projects and Utilities

During the development of our complex applications, we have gone on a small tangent to create this small application. Potentially the first of many, which is this small utility to help people get FULL access to their most prized digital asset the photo. The utility it called Motion Photo Utility.

This tangent has been justified, by the following strongly held belief: "That you own your data, and thus you should be able to access it anywhere".

Motion Photo Utility

Summary

Link to Motion Photo Utility Page

Motion Photo Utility, simply scans and copies (if so desires) all motion photos of your choosing. Then copies them into separate standard image and video files. These new files can be viewed or modified by most software.

What is a Motion Photo and What is the Problem?

A Motion Photo

Most Android phones (I.e. Samsung Galaxy, Google Pixel phones…) take a so called “Motion Photo”. On your phone you can view a Motion Photo as a still image, and the short video. However when you import these images onto your desktop computer or virtually anywhere else (Mac/ Windows/ Linux/ Appliance) you can only see the image!

The Problem

• Can't see video portion of Motion Photo on desktop.
• A lot of desktop applications, destroy the data imbedded in these files.
• The video portion of the file takes up a considerable amount of space, yet it is not possible to view that information outside of the mobile device!
• Extra file storage for data that is not readable. As the video portion takes up considerable amount of space.

The Solution

With Motion Photo Utility - now that the photos are converted to a universally usable format, the resulting data (photo and short video), can be viewed on virtually any device. You can then edit that data with your favorite software and share. One important use case is being able to get access to more information in a photo that did not turn out, but captured an important event. By look at the short video frame by frame and pick out a still image out of the video.

Need Your Support

Please consider donating to support this cause, which might help justify further such side tangents that will benefit a lot of people in the future, and/or improve this one. It took a considerable amount of time to decipher the content of the Motion Photo JPEG file. Then develop a robust algorithm that could restore the data into standard file formats. Where nothing is lost in the translation, META data tags and all. We were not able to find any reference standards how the information was crammed into a jpeg file. Long story short, with no roadmap of the modified file contents, special utilities were written just to help decipher the binary data in order to help recognize standard image data blocks etc.