Discover the magic of ARkit

1. Discover the Magic of ARKit

2. On June 5th, 2017 at WWDC ’17, Apple publicized to the world about its intentions to
have an Augmented Reality Framework and became a leading purveyor of AR
overnight. ARKit allows existing iPhones and iPad devices with iOS 11 to augment
reality in a way that makes virtual objects truly feel like they’re in the room with you.
Apple’s ARkit is revolutionary and is far ahead of its competition. Wingnut AR, a
company owned by Peter Jackson portrayed a demo using ARKit where the
Founder of WETA workshop and director of LOTR movies used a table top that was
augmented into a small town and some space jets flew over the town and started
pulverizing the town with high-end sound effects. ARKit opens a world of possibilites.
Not only can you bring your favorite virtual characters alive, You could open up
portals and go into uncharted virtual territory.
Apple has eased the process of using AR framework and it is now easily possible to integrate AR
features into an app.

3. The Science behind ARKit
The prerequisite of an AR experience is the ability to create and track the correspondence between
the real-world and the virtual world. Integrating AR into an app allows us to create a virtual object by
just pointing your camera and lets you alter it. This is the basic notion behind AR.
Apple uses SLAM tracking (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) in ARKit. There are no depth
sensors on iOS devices yet. So ARKit uses the device's camera and motion sensors to process SLAM.
The device's camera takes a picture and using computer vision identifies unique features in that
picture. It again takes another picture and identifies the features. It compares the first and second
image and does calculations along with data from motion sensors to identify the difference between
those two images and determine the depth in the view. This is done with a live camera view when the
device is in motion to get high accuracy without any calibration.

4. Just like how your eyes interact with brain, the device has two different views which involve
tracking the features and position of the scene. With this, ARkit can produce a 3D map of the
environment. Now with depth sensors being added to the newer models of the iPhone, the
tracking will be much more accurate, thanks to ARKit.
The Features that make ARKit distinctive
Absolute Tracking
Using a technique called visual-inertial odometry, the process combines information from the
iOS device’s motion sensing hardware with computer vision analysis of the scene which is visible
to the device’s camera. It is able to recognize unique features in the environment, tracks
differences in the positions of those features in the video frames and compares that information
with the motion-sensing data.

5. Detecting and Visualizing
Hit testing - This allows visualization of the real world surface from the video frame.
Plane Detection - Detects a plane surface in the scene and get its position and size. This plane
can be used to place virtual content.
Vision with ARkit
Vision is another APi which was released with iOS 11 that allows high-performance image analysis and
computer vision techniques to identify faces, detect features and recognize objects. Vision integrated
with ARkit enables the app to track objects from the camera view. The tracking is used to interact with
the app and the user is able to do stuff like paint using his finger. The finger is tracked here as the object.
Other types of gesture tracking enable many functions of the app. This is a basic concept used in HMD
AR devices. Now with Vision, it is possible for the application to track objects and use them as an input
without the requirement of any sensors .

6. Apps made with ARKit
It is now in the realm of non-geeks to make an AR app using ARKit.
Furniture Using AR
Companies that manufacture Furniture can not only create
excellent awareness based marketing campaigns but can also
use AR to instruct people on how to assemble the furniture. PayPal
recently allowed AR patents for their gateway.

7. Graffiti using AR
Drawing over thin air is maddening and cool at the same time. Now draw your own graffiti floating over
your office or home using just an Iphone. Who knows? You could impress your boss by showing the geeky
side of yours and get a pay raise.

8. AR_Portals
Doctor Strange opens up inter-dimensional portals to travel to other worlds and you can do the
same with the AR portal app. With Augmented Reality, you can travel to other virtual worlds from
your world. We used Depth Masking technique with Unity to create a portal effect into another
virtual world. ARKit allows you to place the portal in a room and you can walk into any of the
portals.