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Apple's ARKit is the result of work going back to 2003 by Metaio, a leading AR SDK vendor that spun out of Volkswagen. Apple acquired Metaio in 2015 and shutter

Apple's ARKit is the result of work going back to 2003 by Metaio, a leading AR SDK vendor that spun out of Volkswagen. Apple acquired Metaio in 2015 and shuttered operations, including Metaio's popular AR conference [1]. Google Tango emerged out of Google Advanced Technology and Project Group (ATAP) in 2015 after a 2 year incubation period [2]. Both do a great job of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) - the foundational tech needed for AR applications. ARKit is tied to development for iOS applications and form factors - all handheld at the moment. Tango is tied to development for Android applications and Asus/Lenovo phablets - all handheld at the moment. This tech isn't new, but Apple and Google and bringing it to the masses, whereas it had mainly been confined to niche advertising uses previously. The author glossed over many of the smaller vendors that have been doing AR SDKs and cloud services for years. Also skipped over Microsoft's play in this market, which currently revolves around PTC Vuforia and Unity development of Windows 10 AR apps for Hololens. Here's an overview of where the players in the AR development solutions market have plays: http://www.vdcresearch.com/News-events/iot-blog/images/ARKit.png http://www.vdcresearch.com/News-events/iot-blog/images/ARKit... [1] https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/apple-metaio/ https://techcrunch.com/2015/05/28/apple-metaio/ [2] https://plus.google.com/+GoogleATAP/posts/c3nZ3a12NKa https://plus.google.com/+GoogleATAP/posts/c3nZ3a12NKa

raghavkhanna 9y ago
Good points, just wanted to point out that, according to their documentation[1], Apple ARKit doesn't do SLAM, but Visual Inertial Odometry, which is one of the (important) components of a SLAM system, whereas Tango does the full SLAM pipeline with loop closure and relocalisation, and should therefore enable more, larger scale applications and allow for persistence between device/app reboots etc. [1] https://developer.apple.com/arkit https://developer.apple.com/arkit
- AndrewKemendo 9y ago
  Apple ARKit doesn't do SLAM, but Visual Inertial Odometry, which is one of the (important) components of a SLAM system, whereas Tango does the full SLAM pipeline with loop closure and relocalisation This is actually not as cut and dry as it sounds. Generally speaking the difference between VO and SLAM is how it handles accumulated errors to do LC/relocalization. Almost by default a robust VO system using some kind of sensor fusion does a form of relocalization but rarely loop closure. I say this because I feel like it undercuts Apple's effort by stating it's a purely VO approach and I don't want people to get the impression that you can't do round trip SLAM without active depth (IR etc...).
  - raghavkhanna 9y ago
    I was in no way trying to undercut Apple's efforts, just stating what's written in their documentation [1], i.e they're currently only performing tracking with VIO as compared with Google's [2]. "Almost by default a robust VO system using some kind of sensor fusion does a form of relocalization but rarely loop closure." This is not true, Visual(Inertial) Odometry systems typically estimate "odometry" i.e frame to frame motion tracking hence the name, such as in [3] and [4], whereas SLAM systems, such as [5], store a map of features, and their descriptors to relocalize which isn't necessarily a typical feature of pure VO systems. [1] https://developer.apple.com/arkit https://developer.apple.com/arkit [2] https://developers.google.com/tango/developer-overview https://developers.google.com/tango/developer-overview [3] https://github.com/uzh-rpg/rpg_svo https://github.com/uzh-rpg/rpg_svo [4] https://github.com/ethz-asl/rovio https://github.com/ethz-asl/rovio [5] https://github.com/raulmur/ORB_SLAM2 https://github.com/raulmur/ORB_SLAM2
    - AndrewKemendo 9y ago
      Sure, didn't mean it to sound accusatory. So the reason I say that it's "almost by default" is because on really quality VO systems, if you turn in a 360 degree circle, the image descriptors and pose estimates returned are almost exactly the same. It's not of course the same, but the effect for an end user is the same and can be extended relatively easily.
  - steinomri 9y ago
    This comment is spot on. Actually if you have a device with ARKit on it, you can see for a fact that they do have relocalization: cover the lens for a few seconds until tracking is lost, then return to the point of origin, you will see that the intial cube (placed at the origin) snaps back to the correct place. What they probably don't do is global mapping of the entire session.
scarface74 9y ago
You just made the same point that the article made. How many people will be able to use ARKit based apps when iOS 11 ships in September - all 64 bit iOS devices that Apple has ever sold. What percentage of Android devices will get to use Google's AR solution? How many devices that have hardware capable of using Google's solution will ever see the OS update?
- bhouston 9y ago
  Google can shift strategy - AR for all even without tango - and I hope they can do it quickly, otherwise they are at a significant disadvantage.
  - scarface74 9y ago
    What strategy could that be with the majority of phones with Android running really old OS's and lowend hardware?
    - bhouston 9y ago
      Just markerless AR based on video analysis combined with gyroscope. It isn't the hardest thing. Even if it is just 30% of Android phones that is still a larger userbase than iOS. Android's fault is over reliance on tango hardware because they are going for perfection rather than good enough.
      - hedgehog 9y ago
        Google has a much harder job here given that Android hardware is more diverse and that the OS images are not under their control. Apple has a significant advantage in that the lowest-end iOS 11 devices ever shipped are >100 GFLOPs with GPU, the lowest end they sell now is about 172, and they control all of the software so they can use the GPU on every device.
        pjmlp 9y ago
        They have chosen to do that. I am quite happy that one year later Android N only managed to acquire 9% and KitKat is still rocking with 18%. Maybe now that Google sees no one gets their new shinny OS every single year, they change their attitude. Trello is not the solution as it is only available in Android O, it still leaves to the OEMs the choice to actually make it work and with Android N at 9% one year later, who knows how many years it will take until Android O becomes relevant at all.
Tanegashima 9y ago
Google did practically nothing with tango, it’s just smoke and mirrors for Wall Street to see... Their Tango is just a rebranding of PrimeSense technology, which is owned by Apple https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/googles-project-tango-includes-tech-apple-acquired-3d-imaging-company-primesense/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/googles-project-tango-incl... It is time that people stop falling for that meme that Google makes things, Google doesn’t make anything, Google sells the image of a reputable company, they make money off ads and that’s it.

raghavkhanna 9y ago

Good points, just wanted to point out that, according to their documentation[1], Apple ARKit doesn't do SLAM, but Visual Inertial Odometry, which is one of the (important) components of a SLAM system, whereas Tango does the full SLAM pipeline with loop closure and relocalisation, and should therefore enable more, larger scale applications and allow for persistence between device/app reboots etc. [1] https://developer.apple.com/arkit https://developer.apple.com/arkit

AndrewKemendo 9y ago
Apple ARKit doesn't do SLAM, but Visual Inertial Odometry, which is one of the (important) components of a SLAM system, whereas Tango does the full SLAM pipeline with loop closure and relocalisation This is actually not as cut and dry as it sounds. Generally speaking the difference between VO and SLAM is how it handles accumulated errors to do LC/relocalization. Almost by default a robust VO system using some kind of sensor fusion does a form of relocalization but rarely loop closure. I say this because I feel like it undercuts Apple's effort by stating it's a purely VO approach and I don't want people to get the impression that you can't do round trip SLAM without active depth (IR etc...).
- raghavkhanna 9y ago
  I was in no way trying to undercut Apple's efforts, just stating what's written in their documentation [1], i.e they're currently only performing tracking with VIO as compared with Google's [2]. "Almost by default a robust VO system using some kind of sensor fusion does a form of relocalization but rarely loop closure." This is not true, Visual(Inertial) Odometry systems typically estimate "odometry" i.e frame to frame motion tracking hence the name, such as in [3] and [4], whereas SLAM systems, such as [5], store a map of features, and their descriptors to relocalize which isn't necessarily a typical feature of pure VO systems. [1] https://developer.apple.com/arkit https://developer.apple.com/arkit [2] https://developers.google.com/tango/developer-overview https://developers.google.com/tango/developer-overview [3] https://github.com/uzh-rpg/rpg_svo https://github.com/uzh-rpg/rpg_svo [4] https://github.com/ethz-asl/rovio https://github.com/ethz-asl/rovio [5] https://github.com/raulmur/ORB_SLAM2 https://github.com/raulmur/ORB_SLAM2
  - AndrewKemendo 9y ago
    Sure, didn't mean it to sound accusatory. So the reason I say that it's "almost by default" is because on really quality VO systems, if you turn in a 360 degree circle, the image descriptors and pose estimates returned are almost exactly the same. It's not of course the same, but the effect for an end user is the same and can be extended relatively easily.
- steinomri 9y ago
  This comment is spot on. Actually if you have a device with ARKit on it, you can see for a fact that they do have relocalization: cover the lens for a few seconds until tracking is lost, then return to the point of origin, you will see that the intial cube (placed at the origin) snaps back to the correct place. What they probably don't do is global mapping of the entire session.

scarface74 9y ago

You just made the same point that the article made. How many people will be able to use ARKit based apps when iOS 11 ships in September - all 64 bit iOS devices that Apple has ever sold. What percentage of Android devices will get to use Google's AR solution? How many devices that have hardware capable of using Google's solution will ever see the OS update?

bhouston 9y ago
Google can shift strategy - AR for all even without tango - and I hope they can do it quickly, otherwise they are at a significant disadvantage.
- scarface74 9y ago
  What strategy could that be with the majority of phones with Android running really old OS's and lowend hardware?
  - bhouston 9y ago
    Just markerless AR based on video analysis combined with gyroscope. It isn't the hardest thing. Even if it is just 30% of Android phones that is still a larger userbase than iOS. Android's fault is over reliance on tango hardware because they are going for perfection rather than good enough.
    - hedgehog 9y ago
      Google has a much harder job here given that Android hardware is more diverse and that the OS images are not under their control. Apple has a significant advantage in that the lowest-end iOS 11 devices ever shipped are >100 GFLOPs with GPU, the lowest end they sell now is about 172, and they control all of the software so they can use the GPU on every device.
      - pjmlp 9y ago
        They have chosen to do that. I am quite happy that one year later Android N only managed to acquire 9% and KitKat is still rocking with 18%. Maybe now that Google sees no one gets their new shinny OS every single year, they change their attitude. Trello is not the solution as it is only available in Android O, it still leaves to the OEMs the choice to actually make it work and with Android N at 9% one year later, who knows how many years it will take until Android O becomes relevant at all.

Tanegashima 9y ago

Google did practically nothing with tango, it’s just smoke and mirrors for Wall Street to see... Their Tango is just a rebranding of PrimeSense technology, which is owned by Apple https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/googles-project-tango-includes-tech-apple-acquired-3d-imaging-company-primesense/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/googles-project-tango-incl... It is time that people stop falling for that meme that Google makes things, Google doesn’t make anything, Google sells the image of a reputable company, they make money off ads and that’s it.