I just read Jennifer Bruin’s blog post on an app for the G1 called Wikitude AR Travel Guide. The app employs augmented reality, AR. If you don’t know anything about AR, like me, reading the wikipedia entry is very helpful.
After reading it, I can think of other ways to employ it for everyday use. Here is an interesting idea.
G1 + AR = Astronomy 101 for Everone
Ever find yourself lying down on a field of grass or hood of your car, looking up at the stars in the clear sky and wishing you learned how to identify the Big Dipper, Polaris or Orion? Never? Ok, but what if you did? What if you can take your G1, point it to the sky and have it identify constellations for you as you look through the camera lens? Think of all those millions of children that never had the opportunity to learn about the stars or astronomy, now having all this information in their hands. In addition to identifying the stars, there can be more context of each star given on the screen, like origin of the name, when it was discovered and other interesting stats. Make astronomy fun again. (was it fun to begin with?)
Take it step farther and incorporate interactive learning so that the patterns are not just being identified for you, but the G1 is teaching you how to identify them yourself like in this tutorial.
With this kind of app, an interesting case can be made for the G1 to be subsidized by schools for students. Isn’t learning supposed to be fun and interactive?
Interested in Augmented Reality? Read this wrap up of milestones in 2008 for AR.
Tags: android, astronomy, augmented reality, g1
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They’re already halfway there. Have you downloaded SkyMap yet from the App Store? That’s the one that will give you the name of the constellations in the sky. i don’t think it will give you any history yet, but it’s an amazing app.
I think you hit the nail on the head. As more devices become AR ready, we’ll start to see more context around physical things we may have taken for granted.
Thanks, I just downloaded it and works great. If they can merge this with the camera view then it could be killer.
Last summer I was in England and we went to see a castle and a couple old towns. I can only imagine how much more rich the experience would have been with historical, architectural and personal details. Taking it one step further and enabling communities to update the content much like wikipedia, you can select someone’s recollections of history about landmarks at different points in time. Imagine going to Yosemite on a family vacation and being able to add context to locations that are saved for your children to experience when they grow up.