Réalité Augmentée: AR-based Interactive Displays Debut in Japan

Augmented reality (AR) technologies, which superimpose information from computers on real fields of view in real time, began to be actually used on streets in Japan.
For example, they are now being used for improving item description on digital signage, providing new features to show windows and helping shoppers find stores.

Item description

One of the Japanese companies that promptly employed AR technologies is Toppan Printing Co Ltd. It began testing a terminal that looks like a vending machine and features AR functions and functions to showcase products at three Ito-Yokado supermarkets in October 2009.
For example, consumers can use their mobile phones to read the QR codes that are printed together with sample product information on e

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lectronics fliers available on Toppan's Website. After completing member registration on the Website, they receive a QR code. When they show the QR code to the camera equipped on one of the terminals, they can get a sample product.
Furthermore, when the package of a sample product is shown to the terminal's camera, the display on the terminal superimposes the description of the product on a real image.

Show windows

Sony Music Communications Inc (SMC) and Sky&Road Co Ltd are providing the "interactive show-window display using AR technologies" for offering shoppers new experience. When a person stands in front of the display, it superimposes a virtual image around the person in the real image by using face recognition technology.
"We are offering an experience like being drawn into a wonderland," the companies said.
The display was developed by using the AR development kit of Total Immersion, a France-based software solutions provider.
The display is exhibited in the show window and children's clothing department at an Isetan department store in Shinjuku Ward, Tokyo, from December 2 to 25, 2009.

Virtual fitting room

Furutanisangyou Co Ltd will test its "Magical Mirror" to let shoppers try on outfits and help them find stores in an underground mall in Okasa, Japan.
The Magical Mirror has a full-HD LCD display equipped with several cameras and superimposes the images of clothes on an image of a shopper standing in front of the display. It also has a function to measure the physical constitution of a shopper and process the images of clothes so that they fit the body.
The clothes are actually being sold at stores in the underground mall. And the display can show the availability of the clothes in appropriate sizes.
It is possible to try on up to six items, such as inner clothes, pants/skirts, shirts, dresses, sweaters and coats, at the same time even when they are being sold at different stores. Then, shoppers can go to a store and purchase the items they tried on.
"It eliminates the need for going to many stores and enables to try a combination of clothes that are being sold at different stores," Furutanisangyou said.
However, the Magical Mirror does not use AR technologies in a precise sense. It takes an image of a person standing in front of the display and, then, superimposes the images of clothes on it. So, it is not done in real time.
Still, the company plans to increase the number of items wearable at the same time to nine in October 2010 and enable to show images taken from the sides and behind a person in or after October 2011.
The Fraunhofer Institute of Germany demonstrated such virtual fitting technologies at CEATEC JAPAN 2009, a trade show that took place in October 2009 in Tokyo, under the name of "Virtual Mirror."