NTT AT shows off Amaze ART

There's just something delightful about optical illusions, and for as much flak at 3D gizmos take, we're fans of eye-popping art nonetheless. NTT AT has unveiled a zany new product -- dubbed Amaze ART -- which transforms signs and colored blocks into actual objects when photographed. Presumably using technology similar to that found in your average green screen, the "signposts" sport squared sections of color and a drawn image of a particular item; when photographed, however, the card appears to be an actual object as seen above. The company was also displaying a unique (albeit laced with geekiness) set of glasses which featured cubes of varying color that "amazingly became animal heads" when seen through a camera's lens. It's cases like these where pictures offer a good deal more than words, so go ahead and hit the read link for some pictorial elucidation.

[Bryant @ Oct 25th 2006 1:58PM]

Took me a while to figure out what was going on. After that, I pretty much immediately figured out this is completely useless.

BTW, I don't think this qualifies as art or an optical illusion.

[Warhorse @ Oct 25th 2006 2:25PM]

Seems the only practicle application for the would be the film industry. Might make props and special effects easier to generate.

[illusion @ Oct 29th 2006 5:41PM]

You could do it yourself using public domain software from http://cvlab.epfl.ch/software/bazar/index.html

[chip @ Oct 25th 2006 2:46PM]

Imagine: Your baseball cards, when held in front of an amaze-art equipped telly, would show a 3D representation of the player. Same with pokemon cards, other sports cards, etc. The question is: do the models have to be hard coded into the set? Or does the tv 'read' the information from one of those cards. If so, what kind of range can you expect? And does it do it completely visually? I would think this would be easier to accomplish using something along the lines of RFID..

[Paul @ Oct 25th 2006 2:45PM]

I to fail to see the practical applications, but I think it is pretty cool.

[TIMMAH! @ Oct 25th 2006 3:19PM]

It'd be great for props for a kids show.

[Phour ZwanZig @ Oct 25th 2006 5:36PM]

Ya know Chip, I was thinking that maybe these do use RFIDs, I can't see that the camera could distiquish enuf when the pictures held at such an angle..

I checked out the link but am pressed for time to dig any deeper..

[StreetStealth @ Oct 25th 2006 6:09PM]

This could be used to recognize faces and superimpose graphics on them.

Why, you ask?

"What I thought I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes..."

[ScooterJP @ Oct 26th 2006 1:28AM]

it's a great idea. This post would be better illustrated with the photo of the guy wearing special glasses and seen in the TV with an animal head.
Possible uses:
- sony itoy/chat: chatters don different glasses to assume different personalities, genders etc. Games could be built around this.
- clothes stores: shopper holds card to view different clothes/colours etc. without having to go through the effort of changing into them (or am I missing the point of shopping?).
- hairdresser: as above
- photo booths / tourism: easily change the monument you want to be photographed with.
- vanity photos: be photographed with a famous figure, in a pose of your choosing (with different clothing options).
- advertising: stick these on your posters so consumers can get larger images of objects using their camera phones (or discover hidden items).

[Graham @ Oct 26th 2006 12:07AM]

This is an already existing technology thats been around for ages.

It's called Augmented Reality, and there are boat loads of research and commercial products out there that do it already.

ARToolkit, MXR Toolkit, ARToolkitPlus (for cellphones), ARTag, etc.
Some of these have been aroud for 10 years.

The markers shown in the link look like ARToolkit3 markers to me.

[Florian Echtler @ Oct 26th 2006 3:06AM]

This concept ("Augmented Reality") has been around in the research community for at least 10 years, you can even play around with it yourself if you have a webcam: http://www.hitl.washington.edu/artoolkit/ . It's a total ripoff by NTT, I bet they even used ARToolkit.

[Derick @ Oct 28th 2006 2:02AM]

instead of animal heads, you could become the laughing man...

how sweet...

that's practical application: Hiding your identity to anything that can really remember it....

but...how did the camera's take pictures of these things without it doing it's thang...?