Blippar's Visual Positioning System uses GPS to estimate the absolute position of the user, and Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO) to track their local movement. It smoothly integrate GPS and VIO throughout the entire experience by building on the ARCL library, which uses Apple’s ARKit for VIO and Core Location for GPS.
While previous AR solutions relied on GPS and compass to localize the user in a city, the use of Computer Vision brings several advantages. The GPS location error in cities can be over 16m, it degrades where the urban landscape causes bad GPS reception, and varies across mobile devices with different GPS sensors. The Urban Visual Positioning System, on the other hand, achieves a location error of only a few meters and has more than double the accuracy of a standard GPS, it performs consistently across a wide variety of urban scenarios, and across different mobile platforms. Thanks to the principled use of visual cues and geometric reasoning, the Urban Visual Positioning System can self-assess its accuracy much more robustly than a standard GPS system and can take location-based AR to new levels of engagement, for example virtual departure boards in front of train stations, interactive guides in front of famous landmarks, or even a virtual menu hanging on the wall of a restaurant. It can help navigate a complex intersection or find a hidden restaurant by overlaying virtual roads and directions onto the physical world, or engage users in AR treasure hunts with virtual cues accurately hidden at physical locations. Moreover, Urban Visual Positioning naturally integrates with modern systems for tracking the local, relative movement of a phone, like Apple’s ARKit, resulting in very smooth and immersive AR experiences.
After releasing the technology, Blippar released its implementation in the form of an iOS application called ARCity - AR Navigation. The app comes with three layers of information:
Since a camera is involved in the usage of technology, there can be many possible applications:
The technology has no doubt many applications. However, there are many issues that will hinder the adoption/ growth of the technology. The few of them could be:
Chicago is not covered for Urban Visual Positioning technology for the application. Hence, I was only able to check the basic AR based navigation. When app starts, it requires user assistance in locking the exact position of the user. When, the position is locked, it will show you the point of interests like house numbers, street names,building names etc. The application was fast in response time to show up the content related to the surroundings. There were few instances when the position of the street was skewed. You can enter your destination into the app and the app shows a guided navigation view for the user. Following is the video of me navigating from Jackson street to Artopolis, a nearby cafe and bakery.
Urban positioning system along with Augmented Reality technology is an exciting combination. Like every new technology, it has to follow a typical acceptance curve. Augmented reality is experiencing high usage among consumers and developers and is predicted to value USD 30 billion by 2023. Hence, it is right time for the company to cement its footing in this sector. By removing certain caveats in the design of the application, this technology can be one of the most useful companions in urban areas