Mobilizy proposes Augmented Reality Mark-up Language to The AR Consortium

SALZBURG, Austria: SEPTEMBER 22nd 2009.
The nascent field of Mobile
Augmented Reality (AR) is on the verge of becoming mainstream. In
recent months an explosion in the development of practical AR
solutions has given consumers numerous AR applications to experience
and “augment” their daily lives. With this surge in AR development the
potential arises for the multiplication of proprietary methods for
aggregating and displaying geographic annotation and location-specific
data. Mobilizy  proposes creating an augmented reality mark-up language
specification based on the OpenGIS® KML Encoding Standard (OGC KML)
with extensions. The impetus for proposing the creation of an open
Augmented Reality Markup Language (ARML) specification to The AR
Consortium is to help establish and shape a long-term, sustainable
framework for displaying geographic annotation and location-specific
data within Augmented Reality browsers.

In addition to proposing the ARML specification to The AR Consoritum,
Mobilizy will be presenting an overview of the ARML specification at
the Emerging Technologies Conference @MIT, Boston, and at the Over The
Air Event held at Imperial College in London. An introduction to the
ARML specification is available here: http://www.openarml.org

The purpose for establishing an open ARML specification is to assure
all data that is created for augmentation in the physical world could
be universally accessed and viewed on any augmented reality browser.
ARML allows individuals and organizations to easily create and style
their own AR content (e.g. points of interest) without advanced
knowledge of AR, APIs or tools. The ARML specification is analogous to
HTML for the Web, which is used for creating web-pages and web-sites.

Features of the proposed ARML specification 1.0 include:

* Founded upon KML with extension name-space for AR specific data;
* Placement of a “View in AR” icon which clearly identifies a mobile
website that supports location aware (real time) data in an ARML
browser;
* Compliance with basic XML document structure – no proprietary
programming API required to create an AR layer.
* ARML adherent data can be viewed on ARML browsers (e.g. Wikitude)
and KML browsers (e.g. Google Earth);
* Custom styling of AR data (points of interest) via standard KML
styling elements;
* Initial support for UTF-8 encoding.

Additionally all content created using the ARML specification can be
also viewed on other KML based viewers such as Google Earth without
any modification. For Mobilizy, proposing the ARML specification is a
logical step to assure cross-platform exchange of context-aware,
location-based, real time data within an AR experience.

Mobilizy understands ARML as a natural evolutionary process to open AR
for the entire world. We believe that open standards and open
interfaces are a key to success for Mobile AR initiatives. Mobilizy’s
strategy is to build a complete AR eco-system for context-sensitive,
location aware, real time data exchange in conjunction with a
compliant browser that includes interfaces to social bookmarking
services, search engines and directories.

Mobilizy GmbH is offering limited access to the preview version of our
upcoming ARML browser. If you are interested to gain early access, or
you have questions regarding the ARML specification, please contact us
at: arml@mobilizy.com