Today at AWE 2015, Augumenta, Ltd. announced the release of a new version of its groundbreaking interaction toolkit for smartglass applications. Release 2.0 of the Augumenta Software Development Kit (SDK) is the only developer toolkit to allow integration of both gesture control and smart surfaces, providing the basis for a greatly enhanced and more productive user interface for augmented reality work spaces.
The Augumenta SDK, which supports application development on all camera-equipped smartglasses, now provides several types of virtual surfaces. Smart Controls include buttons, switches and sliders that can be used in applications that control either virtual or real-world devices, such as machines on a shop floor. Virtual keyboards in numeric pad, qwerty and special alphanumeric configurations allow fast, ‘in the air’ entry of data and commands.
The Finland-based provider of user interface tools for wearable computing released the first generation of its SDK in 2014. With Release 2.0, developers now can combine application navigation and control using eight dynamic gestures, as well as gesture combinations, with powerful virtual controls and data entry features. Controls may be used individually, or grouped on a single screen view to provide an interface tailored to specific applications. Keyboards are also user configurable, for example, from commonly-used English language formats to character-based languages. The SDK also provides a freehand drawing tool.
“It is increasingly clear to enterprise developers that smartglasses represent a new category of computing device and truly effective applications will rely on new ways to interact with and control applications,” said Tero Aaltonen, Co-Founder and CEO of Augumenta. “Augumenta’s mission is to make smartglass interaction simple and intuitive, and so amplify the power of this new class of devices.”
Uniquely, the Augumenta SDK provides both gesture control and smart surface functionality using single camera, 2D machine vision. Applications running on any camera-equipped smartglass platform available today can support both gesture and smart surface interaction, providing the broadest possible market for developers.
“Computing has evolved from alphanumeric to graphic, then to interactive and now to augmented reality, with each stage marked by introduction of new human-machine interaction tools,” said Peter Antoniac, Co-Founder and CTO of Augumenta. “I began researching interaction tools for smartglass platforms in 1999, and we’ve now been able to match advanced coding with smartglass platforms and give people a powerful new way to interact with devices around them.”
The Augumenta SDK supports development on any smartglass platform running Android, Linux and POSIX operating systems. Augumenta also provides APIs for C/C++, Java and Unity3D, as well as sample code for implementation on the Metaio, Unity and Vuforia platforms.
