Re: thoughts towards a draft AR WG charter

Instructions on how to vote included below.

Thanks to Thomas and Jens for renewing this thread and topic, and for 
expressing the charter in their own words, yet very consistently with 
the concepts I suggested in the July 9 memo.

The breakdown is helpful and it reflects the fact that Jens (and others) 
have already been working on the issue from various points of view.

To give those who have posted and those lurking on the sidelines (and 
from whom we can hear) more encouragement, I had a meeting earlier this 
week with Matt Womer, Staff support person at W3C.

I believe that I was able to communicate to Matt the broad definition of 
"trigger" for AR applications and he saw a distinction between 
GeoSpatial triggers (POI) and other classes of triggers (an image, a 
sound, etc).

An ontology could be designed, building upon existing experience with 
geospatial, for example, to classify/describe triggers that are then 
used for many applications, including Augmented Reality.

I think Matt and I could agree that a trigger can also be described as 
an "event" which consists of one or more sensors (camera, GPS, compass, 
microphone, etc) detecting something (a stimulus) in the real world.

The same sensor(s) could detect two versions of the same event (e.g., 
the Swiss flag on the hotel is recognized as being the same as the flag 
flying over the town hall) and, depending on the service to which the 
user/subscriber is sending the query and the capabilities of the network 
and device, the user might receive a different (unique or standard) 
digital result which is "set" in context of the real world.

Matt and I also explored how the element of time (when was the trigger? 
when did the event occur, is it during opening hours of a business?) can 
be part of the data which is used to retrieve the resulting 
output/linked data.

*RESPONSE REQUESTED*
If you want to see the AR WG charter move forward and become the basis 
of future work, vote with your fingers.

If you like what you are reading sufficiently to work on it, simply post 
a +1 to this list.

If you don't like what you are reading, feel that something important is 
missing, feel free to add value or to differ but, please, be specific.

Thanks again,

-- 
Christine

Spime Wrangler

cperey@perey.com
mobile +41 79 436 68 69
VoIP (from US) +1 (617) 848-8159
Skype (from anywhere) Christine_Perey

On 7/28/2010 2:30 PM, Thomas Wrobel wrote:
> Actually, I think that breakdown is rather helpfull.
>
> The (real) source,
> The trigger method,
> And the data being linked to ?
>
> Would that be the fundamental broken down?
>
> eg;
> Specific real world location you are at
> (Location trigger)
> 3D Model
>
> or
> Specific marker image
> (Image trigger)
> Sound file plays
>
> or even the reverse;
> Specific sound heard
> (Sound trigger)
> Image is displayed.
>
>
> I was before this point more thinking in terminology of "physical
> hyper-link", but Trigger is seeming more appropriate and universal
> now.
> It also seems the perhaps the primary job should be establishing these
> triggers. How to store the link between real and virtual. Not all the
> triggers have to be designed at once. But perhaps starting with the
> basic trigger (GPS?) but in a format that would allow future trigger
> forms to be added.
> I agree that data is a separate issue that mostly is unrelated.
>
> In many ways aggregation is too. Whether lists in HTML, RSS or my
> preferred WFP based communication, the same trigger-definition should
> be able to work in all of them.
>
> Cheers,
>
> On 28 July 2010 14:13, Jens de Smit<jens.desmit@surfnet.nl>  wrote:
>> On 09/07/2010 18:23, Christine Perey wrote:
>>> I feel that a new WG is what is needed in order for the momentum we have
>>> established to really build up steam among the AR community members and
>>> to achieve the contribution it has the potential to make for the
>>> publishers and the consumers of digital content.
>>>
>>> The focus of a W3C WG on defining an AR data format (I am a little
>>> uncomfortable calling this just "POI") is (I recommend):
>>>
>>>   to define new specifications or extensions to specifications (which
>>> exist and already work on the Web) in the area of metadata for AR and
>>> ensuring that when a publisher associates content with "triggers" (of
>>> any kind here: geo-spatial, visual/image, audio, etc), alone or in
>>> combination, there is the most efficient "serving up" of the most
>>> appropriate form of the associated content.
>>>
>>> This as a *MANY possible triggers* (sensed by sensors in any
>>> device-fixed or mobile--and very soon these will be the results of
>>> sensor fusion which will make matters more complicated) to *MANY
>>> possible outputs* problem.
>>>
>>> For example, one possible output could be a 3D object, if that is what
>>> was published and the device can display it, and here there are many
>>> resolutions possible. If the device can only produce text or sounds to
>>> augmented the experience, and there is a sound file published in
>>> association with that trigger, then it would be the output displayed for
>>> the user.
>>>
>>> At the end of the day the WG's work must assure three outcomes:
>>>
>>> 1. any publisher can "prepare" content in a data format which is "AR
>>> ready" or AR enhanced and
>>>
>>> 2. any user can have (reach the data for) the AR experience which is
>>> most appropriate given the limitations of device, network, license
>>> agreement with the publisher, etc.
>>>
>>> 3. the AR experience produced is a "true AR" outcome, meaning that the
>>> digital is fully inserted or otherwise overlaying/sensed by the user in
>>> the real world, not a visual search.
>>>
>>> To achieve the above means creating specifications which are usable by
>>> the existing AR SDKs and AR development platforms, with modifications,
>>> of course.
>>>
>>> In parallel, the work in the graphics community around X3D and Web3D
>>> Consortium will focus on the "representation problem" of making sure
>>> that objects look and "act" correctly in the real world.
>>>
>>> There would also be liaisons with ISO, OMA and other organizations.
>>>
>>
>> Hello all,
>>
>> Since it's been a bit quiet after Christine's nice opening e-mail I'd
>> like to talk about the aspects that I think should be covered by the AR
>> data format (which, mind you, will be only part of the WG's charter but
>> also the most substantial deliverable).
>>
>> I think it is important to realize that, as AR is a fusion of many
>> fields, a data format for AR will be a fusion of many existing
>> specifications already available. What _we_ need to define is a formal
>> way to describe the relation between contextual input and contextual
>> output. More concrete, I feel the following items need to be addressed:
>>
>> - a way to identify and work with triggers. I'm having some trouble
>> putting this into words but Christine has been using the word trigger a
>> few times and I think AR is indeed all about triggers: any input that
>> warrants augmentation of the environment is a trigger in my book. If the
>> trigger is a geolocated point we're talking about a POI, but it can also
>> be a fiducial marker or something else (a more sophisticated image, an
>> object (which includes humans), perhaps a sound, a set of coordinates
>> delineating a 2D or 3D space, heliocentric coordinates, etc...). I agree
>> with Christine that we should probably not use the term POI as much as
>> we did, even though when we start working on a spec I can see POI be one
>> of the first triggers to get specified completely
>>
>> - a way to link data to triggers. Like triggers, data can take many
>> forms: text, 2D images, 3D objects, animated images (aka silent movies
>> :), sounds and any combination thereof. I would vote for the possibility
>> to both use linked data and inline data.
>>
>> - data formatting itself seems to be well covered by available standards
>> and really not our concern anyway
>>
>> - a way of aggregating triggers. Aggregation by grouping is used to
>> create layers/worlds/watchamacallits as well as a way to package the
>> result of searches and a way to store data sets before transport to a
>> user agent. Another important form of aggregation may be nesting:
>> multiple triggers combined to form a new trigger, such as a "person"
>> with a "red shirt" being one trigger or a "doorway" near "(54.2863,4.29346)"
>>
>> - interactions, presumably in the form of event triggers like classical
>> onfocus and onclick, but perhaps also onnearby, onviewed, triggering
>> flow of control in a programming language; JavaScript comes to mind but
>> we need not be limited to that if browsers decide to support other stuff
>> as well
>>
>>
>> I realize I may have gone overboard here because this is probably a big
>> step away from "defining a POI format, perhaps based on the work done in
>> ARML/KARML" which has also been suggested, but I've also tasted some
>> sentiment on the list to very consciously broaden the WG's scope beyond
>> geolocation-based POI listing, especially after the offer of the
>> Geolocation WG to incorporate our proposed work into their next charter.
>>
>> So, I would dearly like to hear from you all how _you_ feel about this
>> group's future and direction.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Jens
>>
>>
>
>
>

Received on Thursday, 29 July 2010 07:39:16 UTC