SIGGRAPH '22: ACM SIGGRAPH 2022 Appy Hour

Full Citation in the ACM Digital Library

Arithmagical: Magical Platform Technology Towards a Strong AI Virtual Tutor

Arithmagical is an iOS/Android/Chrome app that lets you feed your real math homework to a virtual magical dragon, where AI turns correct answers into dragon food and incorrect answers into mathemagical adventures, with UX that exposes AR themes and seamless non-intrusive computer vision capture in a way accessible to toddlers (with shaky hands and short attention spans). Virtual pet emotional-connection interactivity, memory retention and additional open-ended AI-guided game creation generalize this towards a strong AI virtual tutor platform.

Exploring the use of mobile AR to aid decision-making on-the-go

Extended reality adaptation is gaining traction across a broad spectrum of disciplines. Mobile phones and markerless augmented reality (AR) are fascinating methods for retrieving information because they enable content to be rendered in the user’s immediate environment while they are on the move. This method of rendering virtual content within a physical environment will be accessible to a large audience that, for the most part, does not have access to high-end equipment such as head-mounted displays. Along with a large audience, augmented reality on mobile devices can display dynamic content in real time, even in outdoor settings, providing users with information about physical artifacts that is both immediate and contextually relevant. The purpose of this paper is to discuss the development of a mobile application that will assist users in making on-the-spot decisions based on online content displayed nearby. Along with developing an application that assists users in locating nearby restaurants, a strong emphasis is placed on architecture, user interface, and experience design, as the application will be used in environments with limited focus (e.g., traffic noise or occlusion with real objects). The study concludes with a discussion of the application’s user experience and future research directions in this field. With the rapid evolution of mobile devices, it is critical to understand some of the challenges and design constraints inherent in developing better user experiences for applications that support on-the-go decision-making.

Light & Shadow AR App: A photo lighting workshop in Augmented Reality

The Light and Shadow App is an immersive photography studio lighting workshop in Augmented Reality. The App allows photo enthusiasts to virtually step into a full-size photo lighting studio and visualize the placement of studio lights for portrait photography in three dimensions. With the Light and Shadow App, users can use smartphones or iPads, and Augmented Reality, to move around the photo studio scenes and study the position of lights from different points of view. The App was originally developed for university level photography students at Kwantlen Polytechnic University during the covid-19 restrictions of 2020 and 2021 when in-person learning was not possible. The goal of the app is to recreate the learning environment of the photo studio and allow students to visualize the effect of lighting on the portrait in an interactive and immersive format.

Rosita's Cocina: Fun and Engaging Virtual Cooking and Spanish Education: Fun and Engaging Virtual Cooking and Spanish Education

When removed from their home immigrants often find it hard to maintain their culture, one of the ways they often hang on to it is through food. Rosita's Cocina is designed to help kids learn about their family's history, language, and traditional food. Rosita's Cocina is an app designed to teach kids to cook in a digital environment while their parents or grandparents cook the real dish. The digital twins of the ingredients and tools will allow the child to experiment with cooking techniques traditional to Mexican cooking in a safe way, while using familiar Mexican recipes like flan or chiles rellenos in order to teach new words and enforce and master old vocab. As they learn more about their traditional cuisine and the history behind their favorite dishes, they will also practice their Spanish to be better able to communicate with their elders who may have a language barrier. Rosita's Cocina also helps engage children in the process of cooking using tools they are familiar with and excited to use, integrating technology into meaningful cultural experiences. The simple recipe tool allows elders to record the dishes they remember from their childhoods and pass it down to the younger generations in a fun and engaging way for the elder and the child. Rosita's Cocina was designed in AdobeXD as a prototype and visualization for the ultimate goals of the application.

Sound Scope Phone: Focusing Parts by Natural Movement

This paper describes Sound Scope Phone, an application that enables you to emphasize the part you want to listen to in a song consisting of multiple parts by head direction or hand gestures. The previously proposed interface required special headphones equipped with a digital compass and distance sensor to detect the direction of the head and distance between the head and a hand, respectively. Sound Scope Phone integrates face tracking information on the basis of images from the front camera of a commercially available smartphone with information from the built-in acceleration/gyro sensor to detect the head direction. The built application is published on the Apple App store under the name SoundScopePhone.

Trios: Stylistic Rendering of 3D Photos

3D photography has emerged as a medium that provides an immersive dimension to 2D photos. We present Trios, an interactive mobile app that combines the vividness of image-based artistic rendering with 3D photos by implementing an end-to-end pipeline for their generation and stylization. Trios uses Apple’s accelerated image-processing APIs and dedicated Neural Engine for depth-generation and learning-based artistic rendering. The pipeline runs at interactive frame rates and outputs a compact video, which can easily be shared. Thus, it serves as a unique interactive tool for digital artists interested in creating immersive artistic content.