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  • [MUSIC PLAYING]

  • EITAN MARDER-EPPSTEIN: How's everyone doing today?

  • Yeah?

  • Good.

  • All right.

  • Well, welcome to Google I/O. My name is Eitan Marder-Eppstein.

  • And I am an engineering manager here at Google.

  • And I work on augmented reality.

  • And I'm going to take a few polls throughout this talk.

  • And the first one is how many of you

  • are familiar with augmented reality in general?

  • OK.

  • Every time I give a talk like this, more hands go up,

  • which is a really, really great thing.

  • And today, what I'm going to do is

  • give a quick refresher about augmented reality for those

  • of you who maybe aren't quite as familiar with it,

  • and especially how augmented reality relates to smartphones,

  • which is something that we're really, really

  • excited about here at Google.

  • And then I'm going to talk about some of the things

  • that we're doing at Google to improve

  • our platform for augmented reality and the capabilities

  • that we give to some of these devices.

  • All right.

  • So I need my clicker.

  • So I'm actually going to go over here to get

  • the presentation started.

  • But off we go.

  • So smartphone AR stems from this observation

  • that over the last decade, our phones

  • have gotten immensely more powerful,

  • CPUs and GPUs have improved a lot.

  • But the ability of phones to see and understand

  • their environments, and really make sense of the world

  • around them, until very recently was

  • largely unchanged and limited.

  • So if you pointed your phone at this table,

  • it would allow you to take a picture of the table

  • or even a video of your friend climbing over the table.

  • But your phone wouldn't really have an understanding

  • of the geometry of the table, of its position

  • relative to the table as it moves through space.

  • And so what augmented reality seeks to do on smartphones

  • is to take all of this amazing advancement in computing power

  • and leverage it to bring new capabilities to your phone,

  • and to take your phone from beyond just the screen,

  • beyond its own little box, to expand it to understanding

  • the world around it.

  • So now, when my phone looks at this table,

  • it can see that there's a surface there,

  • that there are chairs next to it.

  • And as I move through the environment,

  • my phone can actually track its position as it moves.

  • And we think at Google that augmented reality

  • is really exciting.

  • And we've been excited to see some of the stuff

  • that you've built. And we've categorized it

  • into two main buckets where we think

  • augmented reality can be really, really great for applications.

  • So the first bucket is we think that augmented reality can

  • be useful on smartphones.

  • So recently, I was remodeling my kitchen.

  • All right, another poll-- how many of you

  • have remodeled anything in a house?

  • All right.

  • So if you've done that, you know that measurements

  • is a real pain.

  • And what I needed to do was measure for a backsplash.

  • We were buying some subway tile for our kitchen.

  • And I, instead of taking a tape measure out,

  • actually pulled out my phone, went to my counter,

  • and measured from point A to B to C. And I did all of that

  • without moving any of my appliances

  • where I would have normally had to move in order

  • to get an accurate measurement with my tape measure.

  • So AR can be useful in that way, just

  • from providing a better geometric understanding

  • about your environment.

  • AR can also be useful for shopping applications.

  • So recently, we had some very old chairs at my house.

  • And my partner and I were looking to replace them,

  • kind of like these chairs here.

  • And we were getting into a debate over which

  • chairs we liked more.

  • And so with augmented reality, we

  • were able to take a 3D model of a chair,

  • place it in the environment, see the exact size and scale

  • and color.

  • And we could have our arguments about inevitably

  • what kind of chair we would have at home

  • rather than exposing everyone to it at the store,

  • and be more targeted about how we made our purchase

  • and even buy this furniture online and feel much more

  • comfortable with it.

  • So that's how AR can just provide more utility

  • in your daily life.

  • But AR can also be fun.

  • So imagine a character running across the floor,

  • jumping onto this chair, and jumping onto this table,

  • or me sitting in one of these chairs

  • and having the floor drop out from under me

  • to create an ice fishing game.

  • Ice fishing sounds a little bit boring,

  • but I can tell you that in this game,

  • it's actually a lot of fun.

  • And AR can also be used for creative expression.

  • So here, now in your pocket, you have a lot of ability

  • to go out and create new things that

  • were previously only capable to be created by professionals.

  • So you can generate computer-generated content

  • on the go, on the fly.

  • You can take your favorite character

  • and put them into your scene, and have

  • your friend pose next to them.

  • Or you can take pizza or hot dogs or your favorite food

  • items, as we showed here, and put them

  • on the table in front of you.

  • But now, you have this amazing video editing capability

  • in your pocket.

  • And for those of you who have seen our AR Stickers

  • application on the Google Pixel phone,

  • you know what I'm talking about.

  • And for those who haven't, please check it out.

  • It's really, really cool to have this creation

  • power in your pocket.

  • All right.

  • So that's great.

  • AR can be useful.

  • AR can be fun.

  • But how do you actually build applications for AR?

  • How do you get involved as developers?

  • This is a developer conference.

  • So how many of you are familiar with ARCore, when I say ARCore?

  • All right, about half of you.

  • So ARCore is Google's development platform

  • for augmented reality.

  • We want to make it easy for you to build applications that

  • take advantage of these new capabilities

  • that phones provide, of the ability of phones

  • to see and understand their environments,

  • and to build applications that actually

  • react to this understanding.

  • And ARCore was launched a few months ago.

  • And it provides three main capabilities

  • to allow you to do this.

  • The first is something we call motion tracking.

  • So here, consider the example of taking the Scarecrow

  • from "The Wizard of Oz" and wanting

  • to place the Scarecrow at a taco stand

  • and make it seem like he's waiting in line for tacos

  • because everyone loves tacos.

  • So here, if I look at the Scarecrow with my phone,

  • ARCore actually understands its position

  • relative to a virtual object that I've placed in space.

  • So as I move a meter forward, the phone

  • knows that I've moved a meter in this direction.

  • And as I turn left, the phone also knows that.

  • It's able to track its motion as I move through space.

  • And now, if I combine that with my desire

  • to place the Scarecrow a meter in front of me,

  • I can put the Scarecrow right here.

  • And as I move my phone around, I can

  • change where I'm rendering the Scarecrow in the virtual scene

  • to match my physical environment.

  • So that allows you to register virtual objects

  • to your physical scene in a very natural and intuitive way.

  • The second capability that ARCore provides

  • is something called lighting estimation.

  • So here, continuing our "Wizard of Oz" theme,

  • we've got the Cowardly Lion.

  • And when you turn off the lights,

  • say we want to make the lion afraid because it's cowardly.