Enkin: digitized signage for your Android device

Among the hopefuls for Google's Android Developer Challenge (which ended yesterday, by the way, so put down your pencils and turn in your papers) is this little gem, Enkin. Put simply, the navigation app's ace card is its "live mode," which combines a plethora of sensory data -- camera input, GPS, directional information, motion detection -- to show the user an augmented view of what they're actually looking at in their environment. Augmented with what, exactly? Placemarkers that indicate landmarks, that's what, and the possibilities are pretty endless -- restaurants in the immediate vicinity, a gentle reminder of your car's location in the parking lot, the list goes on. Nokia's been toying with this concept for a good long while now but they've failed to commercialize it, so here's hoping will finally see a usable product on a retail device.

[Retro Gamer @ Apr 16th 2008 8:12AM]

"Tank" anyone?

[BalmungAzureSky @ Apr 16th 2008 8:17AM]

How much?

[zorg @ Apr 16th 2008 8:28AM]

This is fine as long as it puts a sign "JERK" over cars that honk too much. That, and "CRAP" over restaurants I don't like.

In fact, I want a website where I can exchange opinionated signs with others.

[y3k.nik @ Apr 16th 2008 8:31AM]

Does this mean 10 years from now our windshields will be a giant 0.0011 inch thick Sony OLED screen with a Sony anti scratch (Same kind used on BD) coating which adds another 0.001 inch to the shield with an android software that puts blackboxes on everything in front of us?

Maybe, when we are not driving, we can view BD movies right there on the OLED screens, while surfing on Google.

[mac @ Apr 16th 2008 8:42AM]

10 years from now [or so] we won't be the ones driving

[DESTOS @ Apr 16th 2008 9:06AM]

That's what they said 10 years ago.

[y3k.nik @ Apr 16th 2008 9:33AM]

@DESTOS..

they did say so, but this time we have movies to back up the claim.

I Robot and Minority Report being good examples.

[Hawkman @ Apr 16th 2008 9:03AM]

This is damned cool, but only if it works well. I have low expectations from stuff like this, there have been too many disappointments... (sniff)...

[Jamie @ Apr 16th 2008 9:06AM]

How about a wearable HUD where you could choose which overlays you see. Add pulse and body temp input from your nike+ sensor, track info from your ipod, caller ID and text/email notifications from your phone, and, of course, google adwords sprawled along the bottom to pay for it all.

THAT, would be frickin' sweet!!

[jerrya @ Apr 16th 2008 12:48PM]

Only if it fits into a pair of contact lenses.

[Ian @ Apr 16th 2008 8:29PM]

but then where do you actually see the world around you? or is that projected from a camera onto this screen of yours? :)

[joshky @ Apr 16th 2008 9:58AM]

as always, leave it to the home brew crew to figure out something a cooperate took years to develop...anyone smell a lawsuit by butthurt cooperates?

[Blair M @ Apr 16th 2008 10:57AM]

> ... lawsuit by butthead cooperates[sic]

To be fair, Nokia was also a late comer to this party, so there isn't much they could sue about. Researchers have been demonstrating augmented-reality navigation and labeling applications like this for years (we did one with a portable computer and head-worn-display when I was a student at Columbia, back in the mid-nineties!). Folks in Europe (e.g., Graz in Austria) and Japan (e.g., Sony CSL) have demonstrated handheld systems like this as well, years ago.

This is a cute demo; very pretty; going from the toy demo to a real system won't be trivial, of course. Notice that all their "points of interest" are very far away (since GPS accuracy sucks). Notice also that they only have a few points of interest displayed (automated 2D map layout is hard; moving that problem to 3D is ... harder).

The only problem I have with this post and their web site is the use of the word "Novel". :)

[Steffen Jobbs @ Apr 16th 2008 10:20AM]

What Android devices? They mean future Android devices?

[Benson @ Apr 16th 2008 9:20PM]

There are current Android devices. Remember there's this emulator in the SDK? You can take the filesystem from that and run it in a number of Zauruses, an N800/N810, or some other devices.

I wonder if this works (including GPS and camera) on the N800... That would be sweet, if not very practical yet.

[Richard Lai @ Apr 16th 2008 10:41AM]

This is similar to what Bill Gates showed in his last keynote.

[steve @ Apr 16th 2008 10:46AM]

I can very well imagine that advertising or better yet, "airvertising" will become very popular on platforms like this.

[fwank @ Apr 16th 2008 11:36AM]

This is an awesome idea!

However, I'm doubtful it works... at least not the way we would all hope. The accelerometers on most phones only provide *changes* in orientation, not absolute ones with respect to magnetic north (the accelerometers can't tell you that you are pointing NW).

The Android Location Based Services API does not support finding the phone's orientation (geographic relative orientation, like your yaw pitch and roll). So there is no way for the phone to determine what the camera is actually pointing at.

This idea probably only exists in PDF form, unfortunately for us...

[andreykulik @ Apr 16th 2008 2:12PM]

I just sent exactly the same concept to Android competition ;) It works. Believe me.

[Colin @ Apr 16th 2008 2:45PM]

Using just the standard API? or did u have to have come up with an elaborate setup?

I wonder how the judges are going to judge his submission. Seems unfair since ur only allowed to submit an .apk and a .pdf. Will they judge the submission base on this setup he's got? What is the .apk going to do when the ADC judges run it?

My point is, I just do think it's possible to run this on an *android phone* this July (or so). Hopefully i'm proved wrong. Again I love the concept, I just seriously doubt it will be shoe-horned into even the sickest HTC phone.

[andreykulik @ Apr 17th 2008 3:20AM]

Yes, it's done with standard API only. Sure it is not so pretty as it would be on the real phone, but at least it has all required calculations in place and may display labels over the camera preview image.

[Matt Warren @ Apr 16th 2008 11:43AM]

Tie this in to Zillow.com and real estate agent's heads would explode.

[Mike @ Apr 16th 2008 12:03PM]

I thought the applications that AndroidGuys have covered look pretty cool too.
http://androidguys.com/_developer-spotlight/

[NxP3 @ Apr 16th 2008 12:59PM]

This is awesome. I've been waiting for something like that. Imagine just point your camera phone at something and a description pops up. Hell, man will never ever have to ask for direction again either. Not like we have been but now more than ever.

[toyotaboy @ Apr 16th 2008 1:40PM]

Is this the house of sara o' conner?

[TareX @ Apr 16th 2008 5:11PM]

It sounds useless. Android should have a powerful GBA and MAME emulator, along with TAT's Cascades UI engine. That's what I'd like to see on the HTC Dream...

[TareX @ Apr 23rd 2008 4:08PM]

I take that BACK. This is a dream application. To be able to wave around my camera phone and see surrounding landmarks is truly brilliant. I just saw the video and now understand what this program is all about...... GREAT GREAT WORK!

[Will H. @ Apr 16th 2008 6:34PM]

This looks neat, but this kind of synthetic vision is already around, just not really on mobile phones. It'll be interesting when it is though.

[Rafael Spring @ Apr 17th 2008 8:57AM]

Hey,
I am one of the two guys you just saw in the video!
For technical details, we refer everyone to the official documentation:
www.enkin.net/Enkin.pdf

About the sensors: They provide absolute values. Accelometers give a g-vector and digital compasses give magnetic north which is enough to compute heading, pitch and roll values to orientate. Maybe what you meant with "changes in orientation" were gyroscopes. They give angular velocities and thus just a relative rotation. We will use them, too, in future versions to increase orientation accuracy and do lots of other stuff with them (see the doc!).

Concerning Nokia, we saw their project when Enkin was almost done (which we also mention in the doc). Of course, this takes some of the "novelty claim" from Enkin but note that Enkin consists of far more than just the Live mode and there is also LOTS of stuff still to come!
The concept of Augmented Reality in general is, of course, nothing invented by us (if such a general concept can be "invented" at all) and thus not "novel" to introduce but it's use of embedding it into a 3D maps/navgation context is indeed something unique.

Rafael

[Greg (from the article) @ Apr 18th 2008 2:11PM]

Reminds me of my augmented reality GPS sketch:
http://www.raizlabs.com/blog/?p=262