RK's Rambling

In our last blog post ( part 1 ), we took a look at how algorithms detect keypoints in camera images. These form the basis of our world tracking and environment recognition. But for Mixed Reality, that alone is not enough. We have to be able to calculate the 3d position in the real world. It is often calculated by the spatial distance between itself and multiple keypoints. This is often called Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM). And this is what is responsible for all the world tracking we see in ARCore/ARKit. What we will cover today: How ARCore and ARKit does it's SLAM/Visual Inertia Odometry Can we D.I.Y our own SLAM with reasonable accuracy to understand the process better Sensing the world: as a computer When we start any augmented reality application in mobile or elsewhere, the first thing it tries to do is to detect a plane. When you first start any MR app in ARKit, ARCore, the system doesn't know anything about the surroundings. It starts pro

Reading Time: 7 MIn Some of you know I have been recently experimenting a bit more with WebXR than a WebVR and when we talk about mobile Mixed Reality, ARkit and ARCore is something which plays a pivotal role to map and understand the environment inside our applications. I am planning to write a series of blog posts on how you can start developing WebXR applications now and play with them starting with the basics and then going on to using different features of it. But before that, I planned to pen down this series of how actually the "world mapping" works in arcore and arkit. So that we have a better understanding of the Mixed Reality capabilities of the devices we will be working with. Mapping: feature detection and anchors Creating apps that work seamlessly with arcore/kit requires a little bit of knowledge about the algorithms that work in the back and that involves knowing about Anchors. What are anchors: Anchors are your virtual markers in the real wo

I am part of a program called Mozilla Reps. Though I am involved as a volunteer contributor with Mozilla for quite some time now, I am relatively new to the Mozilla Reps program and hardly know anything about the program apart from my scope of work in it. Apparently, this is the Election time for voting the nominated candidates for the Council who will spearhead the program for the next session. Since I am new to the program reading about everyone's election campaign and hearing about what they will do for the program was not giving me any clear motivation to vote for anyone specific. Though this wasn't anything super important, I still thought since I have a bit of time in my hand why not do something interesting about it. This is my own impartial way of voting  for those candidates. How the voting works: Each of the candidates was asked a specific number of questions and they all answered in a public forum for all of us to read and evaluate those answers. We