The Marmota project shows off what we can expect from augmented reality in the next few years

Augmented reality, at the moment, is a bit kitsch. It's a technology that's been threatening to emerge for years but, like "virtual reality," it's always been held back by technological constraints. Until the last year or two, most AR and VR implementations involved you wheeling around a laptop (or strapping it to your back!) -- and VR still requires a silly pair of glasses. That's all about to change, however, with the gigahertz-in-our-pocket smartphones.

In the next few years, almost everyone in the Western world will have a handheld device that's capable of displaying rich 3D graphics. GPS will pinpoint your location and elevation in real-time, and 3G and 4G (5, 6, 7 ...) networks will make both topological data and the Internet's wealth of contextual data available at any time and any place. But enough talking, let me show you what I'm talking about: check out the Marmota project. It hides behind such subtitles as "visual environment monitoring" and "semantic image labelling," but in essence, it's the next step in augmented reality.

The best thing would be for you to read through the Marmota website and check out the pictures, but I'll give you an example of what Marmota will let you do. Right now, you can pull down Flickr photos from a given geolocation -- that's pretty cool, ... but that's also about it for the current state of augmented reality. With Marmota, you point your camera at a landscape (or cityscape!), and the server sends you topological and contextual information for the scene you're looking at. So, if you hold your smartphone up in front of a mountain, the mountain's name and elevation are shown on the screen (here's a larger version of the image above) -- the software can also show you roads, landmarks, and so on. Using topological information, the 2D image on your phone can even be converted into a 3D image (watch the video, it's very cool), and presumably you can then see over a range of mountains and down into the valley beyond!

The coolest thing is, this technology is actually ready to go. The project has used Android phones as its test bed, and the app should be available in the "immediate future." I'll keep you updated and bring you a proper review as soon as possible.

[via ReadWriteWeb]

Tags: android, AR, augmented reality, AugmentedReality, geolocation, gps, marmota, smartphone, VR