Best Demo Award at IEEE ISMAR 2011

Fairlight, TU Graz, and Magic Vision Lab have collaborated on a demonstration "BurnAR: Feel the Heat", which won Best Demo Award at IEEE ISMAR 2011. ISMAR 2011 (IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality) is the premier conference in its field and took place in Basel, Switzerland.

In this demo, a user experiences their own hands interacting with complex graphics simulating smoke and fire effects in the environment. A user looks through a stereo head-worn display (HWD) at their own hands, which start to smoke and interact with flames. A real-time fluid simulation calculates the volumetric effects using the user's hand as input for motion and interaction surface. The hand's location and depth is estimated from the stereo view delivered by the HWD's camera pair.

[See it on our YouTube Channel]

[More details about the demo (1 page pdf)]

[Announcement on official ISMAR homepage]

[Coverage on wired.com]

[Behind the scenes]

Magic Vision Lab demonstrated at the Festival of Innovation 2011

The Magical Magic Of Augmented Reality

Helen Papagiannis shares her experience about Magic Vision Lab. Read the full story here.

Magic Vision Lab showcased their demonstrations at Science Alive 2011

[See it on our YouTube Channel]

[Photos of the event]

Two of our lab members have been awarded for their academic performance

Ulrich Eck , an undergraduate student, has been awarded with a School of Computer and Information Science Undergraduate Honours Scholarships (AUD 3000 per annum) for his academic merit. Ulrich will now continue his Honours Thesis on Haptic Augmented Reality.

Arindam Dey has been awarded with a School of Computer and Information Science Research Award for his excellence as a PhD student. Arindam is currently finalizing his PhD studies on the Evaluation of Mobile Augmented Reality Visualizations.

Magic Vision Lab takes the opportunity to congratulate the award winners and their supervisor Dr Christian Sandor , and encourage them to produce more high quality research in the future.

X-Ray Vision on your mobile phone

Consider a world with a perfect data connection. You can get mobile broadband wherever you go at speed enough to stream video in HD quality without a hitch. Now throw in flawlessly designed hardware, seamlessly integrated into your every-day clothing and your pocket devices. Sounds good, doesn't it?

World Lab Segment

[See it on our YouTube Channel]

"World Lab from the University of South Australia

In the lab of Dr. Christian Sandor the latest AR research is being done. AR or "Augmented Reality" that, in addition to simple information overlays available to current computer systems, is creating a new visual technology." (Google Translate)

[Transcript Excerpt] [Cached] [Cached Translation]

TEDxAdelaide Talks on Youtube

Dr. Sandor's talk at TEDxAdelaide is online on youtube now.

Inspiration - Augmented Reality (Program Report 2010)

Christian entertained and educated the ASSETS participants for 45 minutes with a riveting demonstration of Augmented Reality, in which volunteers experimented with manipulating virtual objects in the real world. The future is already here!

Dr. Sandor speaks at TEDxAdelaide

Augmented Reality and the Magic Vision Lab will be featured at TEDxAdelaide.

More Augmented Reality X-Ray Systems

Augmented reality will make superheros of us all. A preview of what you can expect for ISMAR2010 from Magic Vision Lab.

See All

"Magicians from the University of South Australia in conjunction with engineers Nokia developed a program that allows see through objects. Perhaps that is in the coming years technology X-ray, available in three versions - Vision, Meltvision and Distortvision, will be equipped with mobile devices from the Finnish Electronic giant. Mode X-ray Vision directly" (Google Translate)

'X-ray vision' coming soon to Nokia phones

What to expect from augmented reality. Nokia has commissioned the development opf 'x-ray vision' technology for its mobile phones. The technology has been in development at the University of South Australia (UniSA) since November 2009 and comprised of 'Augmented Reality' software that allowed users to see through walls to navigate...

Lost? X-ray vision gets you mobile

LOST in a big city? It's a familiar experience. So imagine if you could use X-ray vision to see what was on the other side of the building in front of you. It sounds like science fiction, but researchers from the University of South Australia have developed computer software designed for mobile phones that can achieve just that...

Afternoons, on ABC Radio

Google Earth and Streetview to enable phones with X-ray vision

Have you ever imagined a phone that could give you X-ray vision? No, nor have I but amazingly it seems it may be available within the next 2 years. The mobile phone software is being developed by boffins at the University of South Australia...

Magic Vision Lab revealed.

Mobile magic melts buildings at the touch of a button Using your mobile phone to see through walls, around corners or to melt away objects in your field of vision could be just a year away from commercialisation, according to a UniSA researcher.

Dr Christian Sandor, Director of the Magic Vision Lab at UniSA and his team have developed advanced Augmented Reality software, specifically for use in mobile technology, in partnership with mobile phone giant Nokia...

Read the full Media Release

Magic Vision Lab will Melt, Distort, X-Ray and then Augment your Reality.

Chris Sandor, a veteran AR researcher, who worked with some of the most distinguished AR labs and researchers in the world such as Graz University, Columbia University, TU Munich, and Canon Research - is now is the Director of the Magic Vision Lab at the University of South Australia...

Reality and imagination or fantasy reality.

"Professor Amir Pervez Retort Washington University working on developing his bionic contact lenses. Llachshioslmo, lenses will allow those wearing them to see things that other people will not see: Csibito sky, lens elements to see the weather forecast hours written on a flashing sign that hovers over them. When he read a newspaper in a foreign language, they will see on page Simultaneous translation of words, hide the original text..." (Google Translate)

Why People Get Excited About Augmented Reality.

Really, Why do people get excited about augmented reality?

I was stumped by this question in an interview for the NY Times and my first reaction was: duh! 'cause it's friggin' awesome!

But when you think about it, people get excited about Augmented Reality because... because they never thought it'd actually become possible...

Improving Spatial Perception for Augmented Reality X-Ray Vision. (7 News)

X-Ray Vision via Augmented Reality. (Games Alfresco)

The Wearable Computer Lab at the University of South Australia has recently uploaded three demos showing some of its researchers' work to Youtube. Thomas covered one of those, AR Weather, but fortunately enough, he left me with the more interesting work (imho).