Daily Archives: September 12, 2019

I am now working on a book about AR, roads and transportation. The following is from a section about AR and the Tour de France.

Hello reader.

So...

In Spring of 2019, I was excited to discover that the world of cycling had a growing number of AR apps and products. Excited because, previous to these discoveries, I could only find three successful examples of AR.

The first was Pokemon Go but, as huge as it was, it created the misleading impression that AR was only for games. Next: 19 Crimes, an Australian wine company that achieved massive success largely due to their series of AR "living wine labels”. The third example was Ikea, whose AR app allowed buyers to "insert" digital models of furniture into their real homes, so as to visualise the ideal purchase.

Also, there were many exciting AR projects in medicine and industry, but these uses required expensive viewing devices, like the Hololens.

So, when I discovered cycling goggles with AR functionality? Great! An AR app that allowed users to customize a bike and then order it? Yes! An AR bike repair manual? Yes, again! These  simple uses were practical, but with hints of openness, adventure and excitement. Vitality!

By July 2019, when I gave a presentation at the Great Ohio Bicycle Adventure (GOBA),  I thought I had discovered all that there was in the world of (AR +bicycles). I invented the word “arbicle”, defined as bicycle devices utilizing AR. I learned that the safest, most successful AR/bicycle interactions would require an AR network that includes vehicles, drivers, pedestrians and everything connected with roads. I began a book about bikes and AR.

And then I thought I had a good idea. To break up all of the technical ideas, and to inject some excitement into the book, I decided to write about futuristic uses of AR in the Tour de France. I came up with ideas like “fatigue hawks”, “blood hawks” and “wind hawks", terms that would be applied to specialized data scientists who coached cycling teams.

So...

After writing a  blog post about “fatigue hawks” and then writing about theoretical uses of AR at the Tour de France, I discovered the NTT website, outlining what they had done for the 2019 Tour de France, and what their future plans were.

Although the NTT website doesn’t use exciting names like “blood hawks”, they do use data in exciting ways, especially in the areas of data collection/processing, AR, 3D mapping and AI. NTT is making media history. Pioneers, they are leaving the safe continent of broadcast television to venture into the uncharted islands of billions of mobile devices.

NTT’s advancements will continue to have huge effects upon the Tour de France and beyond. Much more info at https://hello.global.ntt/en-us/tourdefrance

And no, NTT is not sponsoring this (nor is anyone else). Having said that I would be happy to write about NTT's London headquarters, or their facility dedicated to the Tour de France, in Mulhouse, in eastern France.

TO BE CONTINUED