Tag: disney augmented reality

Coloring books get an augmented reality face lift from researchers

| October 7, 2015

This traditional activity for children can now bring on a 3D experience through mobile devices.

There isn’t anything new about having a child sit down with a box of crayons to bring a color to a black and white image in a coloring book, but researchers have now added augmented reality to the experience that could allow kids to see a three dimensional version of their projects through the screens of smartphones or tablets.

With the right AR app, the drawing is monitored and a child can enjoy an enhanced experience from the activity.

For example, if a child were to fill in a coloring book image of an elephant, just as he or she usually would, the augmented reality would make it possible for the colors to be filled in on a tablet or smartphone screen in real-time and can bring an animated, 3D version of that elephant to life on the device screen. That animation is then integrated into the video that the child can watch.

The augmented reality app maintains its core focus on the typical coloring activity while enhancing what is viewed.

Augmented Reality - Image of Coloring PencilsOn top of the image the child is coloring, it creates an AR overlay on top of reality that enhances the engagement between the child and the image being colored. The preliminary user testing conducted by researchers was conducted with adults instead of children. What they determined was the majority of users said that their motivation for drawing within the coloring books was increased through the use of the app. In fact 80 percent of the participants in this study said that using the mobile app increased the connection that they felt with a character in the book.

The researchers were from ETH Zurich, the EPFL university in Switzerland, and from Disney. They made a presentation of this new AR technology based experience in Fukuoka, Japan, at the IEEE International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR 2015).

While the research is currently being shared primarily within scientific circles, it has already made its way through the tech transfer process, which has already brought to life the Disney Publishing Worldwide and Bendon partnership augmented reality product that was launched earlier in 2015, called “Disney Color and Play”.

Augmented reality search technology launched by Disney in new app

| April 6, 2013

Augmented Reality Disney SearchThe UTV Stars application will apply AR for enhancing the user experience in a high tech way.

Disney UTV Digital has just announced the release of its UTV Stars application for both Apple iOS and Google Android based devices, and that it will feature an augmented reality search option.

This new app has a strong entertainment focus and provides a broad range of different content, says Disney UTV.

The company has revealed that the new application includes content such as live TV streaming, movies, gossip, and Bollywood news. However, the tech and mobile commerce news headlines are being made as a result of the augmented reality feature which allows smartphone and tablet users to snap a movie poster picture from any medium – from print to screen, etc – and gain access to a considerable amount of information about that film.

The augmented reality search feature provides access to everything from text to video and social media.

When the device user applies the augmented reality search feature to a poster, he or she can learn more about the movie through behind the scenes videos, movie trailers, images, Tweets, and other forms of relevant content.

The augmented reality feature itself is called Snap Search. It is powered by Ocutag Technology by Ricoh Innovations. The app is designed to provide a great deal of information, including the very latest in a section that it has labeled “Just In”. This is made up of celebrity tweets from a number of different participants. There is also a “spotted” feed which provides both gossip and news from UTV Stars, including videos from that channel as well as pictures from paparazzi.

The augmented reality feature isn’t the only mobile commerce element to the app, as it also focuses on marketing via social media. It allows its users to share the updates that it sees by way of their own social network accounts at Twitter and Facebook, as well as through email. Moreover, they can save images as favorites so that they can be easily seen later in their personal lists. Should this app become popular, the social element could potentially help it to spread much more quickly and gain more users.