Monthly Archives: October 2015

Coloring Books in 3D, The Perks of Being Young in 2015

Remember as a kid when you used to color in your coloring book? The appeal was either the characters in the book or the fact that you just got a new box of Crayons. Exciting.

Well, things have changed a little since then; recently Disney designed a augmented reality coloring book that allows individual’s to view their work in 3D with the help of a tablet.

Disney has created a new software that takes the image of the character in the coloring book and maps the colors applied by the artist to display a pre-made 3D animation of the character. When developing this product, the developers conducted tests where one can view the coloring book page through an app and watch the character move around in an augmented reality 3D space on the page. Developers choose to use a tablet as the means of viewing the augmented reality because they rely so much on a tap and swipe interface, which means that babies and young children can operate their media devices and navigate through this coloring book.

A cool feature of this app is that it has developed a way of reading the entire recognized image on a curved surface, such as the interior pages of the coloring book. This app does not only have to recognize the boundaries of the object, but the boundaries of the drawing itself, including the colors the crayons apply, even if the page is moving around. Pretty neat, right?

But it gets even better. The image on the page doesn’t show the character from all angles, but with the app and a tablet, you can move 360 degrees around the animated character. Each of the characters from the coloring book were created in 3D modeling software and animated, then, each surface pixel on the model was assigned a corresponding pixel space on the 2D image in the coloring book. Thus, if you color the front of your elephant’s pants blue and the app makes the back of his pants blue as well. Presumably if you decided to color the pants with polka dots, the 3D image would be mirrored to make a full, polka-dotted pants pattern.

You can even boot your app and watch your character get colored in real time. Although, experiments with this have shown that the images created are not 100% accurate to the artist of the characters, the test subjects loved the feature.

Below is a video of the coloring book and app:

I-Lab at CEWIT 2015

October 23, 2015Events, Lab Updates, Miscctasso

This past Monday, October 19th, 2015, the Innovation Lab participated in the 12th International Conference & Expo on Emerging Technologies for a Smarter World (CEWIT2015). The conference, originally known as the International Conference on Cutting-Edge Wireless & Information Technologies, is the premier international forum on the applications of emerging technologies in infrastructure, healthcare, and energy, which are three of the most critical components of a smarter global environment. This conference is organized by the New York State Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology (CEWIT) located at Stony Brook University in New York. The conference was located in the Melville Marriot in Long Island, NY.

In order to be featured at this year’s CEWIT expo, the Innovation Lab, like all participants, had to submit an abstract describing their technical contributions highlighting end-to-end technical solutions, applications and systems. The Innovation Lab presented lab member Kelly Smith’s silk screen project, where she made tote bags using the silk screen and sewing machine, Samiha Shakil and Alysha Bullock’s project where they were able to create a fabric using arduino technology, the prototype bathrooms high school students, Drew Kaplan and Shakeel Faizy, created with the 3D printer for cerebral palsy patients (link to blog post covering it here), and Allisha Parvez’s 3D printed scientific models of new horizon satellites.

During the expo, the I-Lab had a table set up where they handed out business cards, had a 3D printer on display, handed out vinyl-cut Innovation Lab designs, and answered all questions about what we do here at Stony Brook University’s Innovation Lab.

Below are some photos taken of the team and their table at CEWIT 2015:

Help Make the Next Discovery About Mars!

October 16, 2015Miscctasso

Researcher Meg Schwamb wants to transfer some of the general public’s Facebook time towards helping her research the planet Mars, specifically geysers on Mars.

Meg Schwamb is encouraging everyone to take part in the citizen science test, known as Planet Four. This test asks individuals to draw circles around what looks like geysers to them around Mars. Schwamb believes that the “wisdom of crowds” often tends to be more accurate than information provided by experts and algorithms.

Schwamb’s project is specifically focused on the south pole of Mars, an area that is coated in water ice, carbon dioxide ice and geysers. She believes that if we can understand this region of Mars better, and what exactly is going on with the geysers, we will also attain a better understanding of Earth and the atmosphere of Mars.

The images Schwamb is using come from Nasa’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is a multipurpose spacecraft designed to conduct reconnaissance and exploration of Mars from orbit.

IP Policy Workshop Success!

October 2, 2015Events, Lab Updatesctasso

This past Wednesday, September 30th, 2015, The Innovation Lab had their very first IP (Intellectual Property) policy workshop!

Allison Singh, an experienced IP lawyer, came in to answer all questions concerning IP policy. Singh has worked with Perfumania Holdings, Inc. and Quality King Distributors, Inc. Singh has also authored Getting Over Not Getting In- A College Rejection Guide, and Rearranged!

At the workshop, Singh spoke about trademarks, copyright, patents and answered questions/listened to proposals considering Wolfie Tank.

Here are some pictures from the workshop: