Monday 16 July 2018

Miniproject: Augmented Reality for free

Augmented Reality doesn't need to be expensive, free tools based around AFrame WebVR exist that are fairly easy to use. In Northampton, we have been playing with Web VR and Augmented Reality using these tools.

In a previous post, what students on the  MSc Computing programme (either Software Engineering or Network Engineering pathways) were playing with was discussed and the A-Frame solutions are a starting point for this post.

In this post, we are going to start looking at using WebVR as part of an augmented reality solution. The best starting point is to build on the fantastic resource Creating Augmented Reality with AR.js and A-Frame by Jerome Etienne, creator of AR.js - the starting code is shown below.



Getting started.

Several ways to do all of this; Thimble from Mozilla,  Glitch - you may need to register - and Codepen.io are all viable (and free) options. Codepen does have a paid, Pro option.

The code below was adapted from the Creating Augmented Reality with AR.js and A-Frame  page.








The first script line sets up the use of A-Frame WebVR. The second one script line adds the additional functionality for  Augmented Reality via markers. The  tags, are a new set of tags a-marker-camera saying which marker is being used; in this case, a preset one called Hiro (see below), which available in AR.js. 



A blue box and text were added to the scene. The example below was shown in codepen via the browser working with the laptops built-in camera.



Using the Hiro marker go to https://codepen.io/scottturneruon/pen/gKVWYq to play!  


Next Step

To take this forward I wanted to replace the text and box with some rotating text when the marker is visible. On the AR in action can be found at http://bit.ly/2N0nvWx; you will need the Hiro marker

The code for the AR in action is shown below.









Adding images to objects

In a previous post (WebVR playtime 1: Basics of setting up, images and rotating blocks) we have seen that in A-Frame if you can create a block and in the tag for the block you add an image that gets wrapped on to the block. Now we are going to add these ideas into the AR solution.

As a recap let look at an example - a-sphere position="0 0.5 -.5" radius=".5" color="yellow" src="test1.png" produces a yellow sphere of 0.5 units radius is produced with the image, stored in test1.png, wrapped around the sphere. Interestingly, any white on the image gets replaced by the underlying colour, yellow in this case, of the object. 

The way the image is mapped on to the objects, changes with the object. If the object had been a box all the sides would have a copy of the image on them. A sphere and box of different colours will be used to show these effects.


In this exercise, I found Mozilla's Thimble especially useful here because it allows images to be added into the file area easily and I was having problems with some other editors getting images to work. The slight downside is the automatic viewing of the site, doesn't work with the camera; this is easily worked around by publishing the site and viewing it as a live webpage (to see an example using the Hiro marker (same one as used earlier) go to https://thimbleprojects.org/scottturneruon/517091).


Ok, so what does this code look like and do? Let's look at the code, it has some text; as well as a white box and yellow sphere with the same image mapped onto them.




The resulting AR solution  can be seen in action below, a still of the marker and AR in action and the short video showing the movement.





via GIPHY

The combination of block, sphere and text, appear when the marker is visible and started to rotate.


Now with a more commercial application adding a logo:




To read more go to 





All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

Tuesday 3 July 2018

Computing Research Outputs January - June 2018



2018

  1. Al-Mahmood, A. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) On wearable devices for motivating patients with upper limb disability via gaming and home rehabilitation. Paper presented to: IEEE International Workshop on Internet of Things: Networking Applications and Technologies (IoTNAT 2018), Barcelona, Spain, 23-26 April 2018. (Accepted)
  2. Al-Sherbaz, A.Turner, S. J.Dohan, M. and Clarke, E. (2018) Blockchain: no thunder no wonder. Invited Presentation presented to: British Computing Society (BCS) Northampton Talk, University of Northampton, 13 March 2018.
  3. Al-Waisi, Z. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) Challenges and opportunities of smart meters in smart homes and smart grids. In: International Symposium on Computer Science and Intelligent Control. Sweden: ISCSIC. (Accepted)
  4. Dean, A. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) A study of the advances in IoT security. In: International Symposium on Computer Science and Intelligent Control. Sweden: ISCSIC. (Accepted)
  5. Devecchi, C.Al-Sherbaz, A.Turner, S. J.Taeed, O. and Petford, N. (2018) Capturing and transacting ‘value for students’ in the Digital University: the Blockchain Educational Passport. Invited Presentation presented to: University of Northampton Research Conference 2018, University of Northampton, 20-21 June 2018.
  6. Dohan, M. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) A study of cache management mechanisms for real-time embedded systems. In: International Symposium on Computer Science and Intelligent Control. Sweden : ISCSIC. (Accepted)
  7. Edan, N. M.Al-Sherbaz, A. and Turner, S. J. (2018) Design and implement a hybrid WebRTC signalling mechanism for unidirectional & bi-directional video conferencing. International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering (IJECE). 8(1), pp. 390-399. 2088-8708.
  8. Edan, N. M.Al-Sherbaz, A. and Turner, S. J. (2018) Performance evaluation of resources management in WebRTC for a scalable communication. In: Computing Conference 2018 Proceedings. London: IEEE. (Accepted)
  9. Mahmood, J. K. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) An overview of prevention/mitigation against memory corruption attack. In: International Symposium on Computer Science and Intelligent Control. Sweden: ISCSIC. (Accepted)
  10. Margarita Espinosa Jimenez, L. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) A study of techniques to increase Instruction Level Parallelism.In: International Symposium on Computer Science and Intelligent Control. Sweden: ISCSIC. (Accepted)
  11. Mohammedali, N. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) A study of reconfigurable accelerators for cloud computing. In: International Symposium on Computer Science and Intelligent Control. Sweden: ISCSIC. (Accepted)
  12. Montasari, R.Hill, R.Hosseinian-Far, A. and Montaseri, F. (2018) Countermeasures for timing-based side-channel attacks against shared, modern computing hardware. International Journal of Electronic Security and Digital Forensics. 1751-911X. (Accepted)
  13. Montasari, R.Hosseinian-Far, A.Hill, R.Montaseri, F.Sharma, M. and Shabbir, S. (2018) Are timing-based side-channel attacks feasible in shared, modern computing hardware? International Journal of Organizational and Collective Intelligence (IJOCI). 8(2) 1947-9344.
  14. Ofori-Attah, E. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) A survey of power-aware Network-on-Chip design techniques. The Thirteenth International Multi-Conference on Computing in Global Information Technology. 2308-4529. (Accepted)
  15. Ofori-Attah, E.Wang, X. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) A survey of low power design techniques for last level caches. Lecture Notes in Computer Science. 10824, pp. 217-228. 0302-9743.
  16. Sam, D. and Opoku Agyeman, M. (2018) An overview of design space exploration of cache memory. In: International Symposium on Computer Science and Intelligent Control. Sweden: ISCSIC. (Accepted)
  17. Slavova, Y. and Mu, M. (2018) A comparative study of the learning outcomes and experience of VR in education. In: IEEE Conference on Virtual Reality and 3D User Interfaces (IEEE VR 2018). Germany: IEEE. (Accepted)
  18. Turner, S. J. (2018) Games in teaching programming: HE perspective. Invited Presentation presented to: Gaming in Education, Milton Keynes, 28 June 2018.
  19. Turner, S. J. (2018) Robots in home and school. Invited Presentation presented to: British Computing Society (BCS) Northampton Robotics Talk, University of Northampton, 17 April 2018.
  20. Yu, Y.Kaiya, H.Yoshioka, N.Hu, Z.Washizaki, H.Xiong, Y. and Hosseinian-Far, A. (2018) Goal modelling for security problem matching and pattern enforcement. International Journal of Secure Software Engineering (IJSSE). 8(4) 1947-3036. (In Press)


All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflected those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon

Sunday 1 July 2018

Computing for Social Good 5: Games in Education



On 26th June 2018 I was very pleased to talk about the work members of the Computing team at the University of Northampton have been involved in, around games within the teaching of programming.

The recent #WomenEd meeting, in Milton Keynes, organised by Anita Devi (@Butterflycolour), Anne Goldsmith (@AnneMGoldsmith) and Jay Rixon(@teaching_think) (focused on Games in Education and a lively discussion on this topic was had, after a number of presentations. Below are the slides to my presentation.




Some of the tweets from the event
















All views and opinions are the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of any organisation they are associated with. Twitter: @scottturneruon