Koorosh Farchadi: Oh hey I'm Koo...
and that's a big old Bulbasaur...
Woman: Excuse me?
How dare you!
Koorosh Farchadi: Wait, what?
Anyways, I know most of you are familiar
with the popular game Pokémon GO.
I can't stop playing it myself
because it utilizes cool
augmented reality right through your phone.
But what you may not know is that research funded
by the National Science Foundation
helped make playing this app even possible.
Man: Oh yeah? Like what, buddy?
Koorosh Farchadi: Well multitouch screens,
advances in batteries,
graphics, chip design,
wireless communications and a whole lot more.
I'd like to tell you all about it but first,
I just need to catch a few more Pokémon.
Man: How about that?
[Plays rap song]
Yeah, huh, gonna catch them all. Catching all these Pokémon.
I'm gonna catch them all,
gonna put them all in my Poke ball.
See them here, I'm on my quest,
gonna be number one, the very best.
Yea NSF Research in my phone,
I can feel, I can't stop 'cuz I'm in the zone.
Walking all day, walking all night,
catching all these Pokémon I feel alright.
Check every rock, look under every stone,
wait a minute I think I'm kinda far from home.
My feet kinda hurt, my gloves feel rough,
I fill my belly with my Jigglypuff.
Big Pikachu I say where are you?
What are those? Those aren't real Pokémon?
Gonna catch them all.
Gonna catch them all. Gonna put 'em all where?
In my poke ball.
Gonna catch them all.
Feeling kind of tired though. Gonna take a nap.
My feet hurt. My neck.
Gonna catch them all.
Oh. Oh. Wow. Koorosh Farchadi: Whew!
Hey, you haven't seen any Pokémon around here have you?
Blair MacIntyre, Director, Augmented Environment Lab, Georgia Tech:
No, I haven't looked in a while.
Hey, I'm Blair, I'm a professor here at Georgia Tech.
I do augmented reality research. Koorosh Farchadi: Meet Blair.
His research lab is helping make it easier to develop
and communicate augmented reality for scientists
and everyday people alike.
Blair MacIntyre: If you're interested I could show you some stuff inside
that you might find more interesting.
Koorosh Farchadi: That would be great.
I just gotta make sure of one thing first.
Blair MacIntyre: Okay.
Koorosh Farchadi: Just had to make sure you were real.
Blair MacIntyre: Come on.
Hey, I'm really glad I bumped into you out there.
I was actually working on a presentation on Argon,
our web browser that has augmented
reality technology built right in.
Koorosh Farchadi: Augmented reality in a web browser?
What does that even mean?
Blair MacIntyre: Well so here's the presentation I was working on
and it's actually a webpage
and I'm running it inside of Argon,
our web browser.
And so in that one web page
I've programmed a bunch of augmented reality stuff
so I can put things out in the world.
So imagine these are Pokémon
running around in the world out there.
I can attach things to places in the world.
So here's a marker that I attached
to the Imperial Palace in Japan,
it's on the other side of world but we can see it right here.
We can also do the kind of augmented reality
that you see in magazines
and so on where people look at a picture
and see a bunch of different 3D graphics.
So all of this is programmed in one webpage
that we've got running inside the browser right now.
Koorosh Farchadi: So is this difficult to do?
Blair MacIntyre: It's no more difficult
really than creating a webpage
so if you can add a little bit of html,
maybe do a little JavaScript programming you
could create a webpage right now that has 3D graphics
in it that you can look at it
in augmented reality. Koorosh Farchadi: Great.
Blair MacIntyre: So the NSF has been funding other
augmented reality research here at Georgia Tech.
Let's go see some of it. Koorosh Farchadi: Let's go.
Blair MacIntyre: So we've shown you two augmented reality projects so far.
I wanted to show you one more that we're doing in the robotarium.
So I'll introduce you to my student Gheric
who works on the Argon project
and is also using augmented reality here to help you understand
what robots are thinking and planning.
Koorosh Farchadi: Hi Gheric, nice to meet you.
Gheric Speiginer, PHD Student, Software Creator:
Hi nice to meet you.
Koorosh Farchadi: So what is a robotarium?
Gheric Speiginer: So the robotarium is a project
where a lot of people all over the world can collaborate on multi-robot systems
and I've built an augmented reality interface
that allows people to see what's going on with the robots.
Koorosh Farchadi: Cool. Can you show me? Gheric Speiginer: Sure yeah. Here.
Koorosh Farchadi: So what are we seeing on the screen?
Gheric Speiginer: So here we see the robots,
you see labels for each robot
and we see a little voltage bar
showing the voltage levels of each robot.
As they move around that voltage will go up and down.
Koorosh Farchadi: So how is this augmented reality helpful?
Gheric Speiginer: So this augmented reality
is actually really useful for debugging purposes.
It allows us to see patterns in the information
that we wouldn't otherwise see
and this lets us understand
what's going on with the various sensors
in the robot systems.
Koorosh Farchadi: Where do you see this technology going?
Gheric Speiginer: So eventually we want
to allow people around the world
to interact with these robots here
remotely through another kind of augmented reality interface.
We want to be able to blend physical robots
and virtual robots
and eventually even be able
to kind of step into the robotarium
and manipulate the robots directly.
Koorosh Farchadi: Wow. Thanks for showing me.
Gheric Speiginer: You're welcome.
Koorosh Farchadi: So thanks for showing us around.
I never knew there was so much
to augmented reality beyond Pokémon Go.
Blair MacIntyre: It's been a pleasure. Koorosh Farchadi: And if you want
to learn more about augmented reality
or any of the cool fundamental research made possible
by the National Science Foundation,
catch us online or visit us on Facebook.
Now I just gotta figure out how to get back home.
[plays rap song]
Yeah, gonna catch them all.
I'm gonna catch them all.
Gonna put 'em all in my Poke ball.
NSF Research in my phone.
I can feel, I can't stop.
I'm in reality.
What's under there?
I fill my belly with my Jigglypuff.
Big Pikachu I say where are you?
Koorosh Farchadi: Do you have any extra SkyMiles?
Do you think I could borrow your keys?
Can I borrow your car?
Do you have a bike?