Week 3 Summary

Argon

Argon is basically an AR design tool analogous to a windowing system for a desktop computer. Argon’s goal is to take advantage of the increasingly important mobile development platforms and their intersection with web capabilities. The three main goals for Argon are:

1. Create a “windowing system” for AR

2. Merge with and build on existing Web technologies

3. Create a system that simplifies powerful application construction

Argon, unlike it’s predecessors, attempts to become not only a research tool, but a truly practical application as a web browser leveraging many web technologies. The Argon web architecture ranges from serving static KARML pages, to dynamic channel interactions with ARGON channel servers. The applications can be constructed in native code (iOS for now) and then bound to a JavaScript interpreter in order to tie in with web technologies.

KARML is the KML AR Markup Language, whose purpose is to link content with physical, real-world locations. This language is an extension of that used in Google Earth/Maps and features some improvements, such as greater fidelity in locating objects.

A number of examples are given of sample projects that have been developed using ARGON on the iPhone. These examples illustrate the ease with which an ARGON application can be developed.

Although the system seems to be working as expected, I am curious to know if there is any way to increase the fidelity of locations, which are extremely important with AR. Locations of both the user, as well as the displayed content.