You must have instructed the elderly at home on the phone how to use household appliances, remotely assisted their girlfriends (boyfriends) and computers (to find an air cushion powder cake on the dressing table), and tried your best to vomit blood to describe the painful experience that the other party was still in the loop.
Although the video conversation can alleviate the scene of "No, honey, is that pink box next to you?", it still can’t solve the problem of "No, no, Hani, you have to open the resource manager first … You don’t know what that is?" This is a little more complicated.
At this time, if there is an application that allows you to directly contrast strokes with strokes on the screen, and at the same time, the other side of the conversation can operate in real time according to your instructions on the screen, it will be done. I wonder how much saliva and effort will be saved.
AR small application solves big problems
An AR application from PTC Vuforia can now solve the problem of remote technical assistance. The company just released this model called "Project"
The application of "Chalk" (a temporary name given by technical students at first glance) allows you to draw pictures on the screen of your mobile phone (pad) according to the target locked by the other lens, pointing out the details that the other party needs to know and providing operational guidance in real time.
For example, as long as the old people at home aim at the TV remote control with their mobile phone cameras, you can draw control keys on the screen of your mobile phone that the old people don’t know, and the other party can operate directly according to this prompt. Girlfriend won’t use the new coffee machine. You just need to aim at the coffee machine she shot with her mobile phone camera and mark all kinds of function keys on your mobile phone screen. You can even supervise your Xiong Haizi’s homework remotely and in real time-without waiting for them to correct, teach and correct it.
The most handsome thing is that this application has nothing to do with all kinds of bulky and expensive VR/AR helmets, and can be used only through mobile phones or PADs. In recent years, with the hype of VR/AR, the industry has been clamoring for the lack of killer applications. The giants have been studying all kinds of head-mounted displays and their peripherals, and the content platform is still scarce. Vuforia, a 400-pound AR applet, did a great job, not only crushing giants like Google, Facebook and Microsoft casually, but also easily destroying the online celebrity AR filter of Snapchat, which is sought after by young people for its lightness and fun. In particular, Facebook, instead of copying Snapchat across the board, why not open such a brain hole? The AR filter is an entertainment function, and Vuforia is a "Project"
Chalk "is both practical and entertaining."
Applications that make it easy for the market to take off are not that abstruse.
Project
Chalk’s principle is to identify the target through computer vision, then create a 3D model of the environment, and keep the AR effect fixed on the established target through motion positioning and tracking, and then add the video dialogue function to these technologies.
For example, in the example of instructing the elderly at home to use the TV remote control remotely, if you draw a label on the screen of your mobile phone, even if the elderly leave the original position with the mobile phone, your label will remain near the button of the remote control. Even the other party can put the phone down for a while, then pick it up, and the mark is still there-provided that you keep the video online.
In fact, this AR application of Vuforia realizes the interaction between two parties who are not in a physical space. This is more valuable than similar applications provided by Snapchat, Facebook and Google mentioned above. The function of this core product makes this application based on mobile communication hardware such as mobile phones have a wider market and people, regardless of women, children and young people, who can use mobile phones, and solve the unsolved problems of all mobile phone applications at present.
Industry critics believe that the function of Project Chalk is not the first (Microsoft’s Skype for
Hololens also has the same function), but Vuforia is really unique in realizing similar functions only on mobile phones and pads without any helmet.
Gartner analysts believe that this application is a milestone:
"If this application direction proves to be successful, then what it really changes is the essence of our interaction with the physical world using smart phones or digital technology."
It is meaningless to just stare at the AR market data on the consulting company chart.
Immediately after the VR that was thrown from the peak of hype to the bottom of the valley, it was a blind pursuit of AR. Consulting companies have thrown out a number of data reports one after another. However, in theory, the future market of billions of dollars has little to do with the hardware and content that are really accepted by the market at present, and the continuation of these chicken blood reports is even more precarious.
It is a miracle to expect "killer applications" to promote miracles in the market itself-it is hard to meet. On the contrary, like Vuforia, it is only based on mobile phones, using existing AR technology, integrating product functions and solving a practical problem that is difficult to solve in mobile phone application at present, which may be the correct direction for AR to be truly accepted by the market.
As a project of mobile chip giant Qualcomm, Vuforia was sold to PTC, an Internet software manufacturer headquartered in Needham, Massachusetts, in the second half of 2015.
At present, Vuforia provides developers with software that can create AR applications. Over 350,000 developers have become registered users of Vuforia. These developers have created more than 40,000 AR applications, such as Lego’s Nexo.
Nights game, Mattel’s View-Master Destinations application. There are still 45,000 applications under development.
Broad market prospects of Project Chalk
Project
Chalk is the first Vuforia-based application designed specifically for the consumer market. However, PTC has also opened the function of the project to industry users. This means that there will be more industry-specific applications, such as Internet service providers can use Project.
Chalk online video to solve the problem of home broadband, or cable TV service providers can tell users how to operate cable TV set-top boxes.
Project
Chalk applications can take screenshots in videos and edit pictures. This is useful for large objects that can’t be completely covered by the mobile phone camera. For example, when you scan a physical car, the interlocutor at the other end of the screen can only see part of the car body in your mobile phone lens, and the previously saved image is an indispensable reference.
Even one party in the conversation can remotely help the other party turn on the lighting on the mobile phone to see the situation that both parties are facing more clearly.
Project
Chalk’s future application direction can also be target recognition. For example, if you open the application and point your mobile phone camera at the router, the application will know the target you are looking at and provide information about it. This is the same as Google we reported before.
The application of Lens is a truth.
Current Project
Chalk must be broadcast live before it can be used, and there is no function of saving records. In the future, chat records will be added so that users can call the materials at any time. However, Vuforia promises not to disclose this information to protect users’ family and personal privacy.
At present, Project Chalk is not an official name, and it is only open to early developers who registered before this summer. It is expected that Apple App and Google will be launched this fall.
Play。 There are also plans to support some Amazon applications on Android.