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IKEA Details Plans for Furniture Placement App Powered by Apple's ARKit

Avieshek said:
We had Photoshoped people on Instagram (& Facebook) Now, house, furniture, a sports car, a life-partner... Indeed game changing. A drone and an empty field is all you need to show your Batcave as the technology progresses, no one knows on the other side of the world.
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And none of this has to do with using ARKit for furniture shopping, so I'm not sure where you're going with this post aside from complaining about society.
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Vjosullivan said:
Yay, a furniture advert app. Is that really what everyone is drooling over? Reminds me of the BBC's "Walking with Dinosaurs: Photo Adventure" that first appeared three years ago. Dinosaurs walking through a jungle on your desktop. Still on iTunes, I believe.
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That's like saying Amazon is a "detergent advert app" or Opentable is a "restaurant advert app." Would you prefer to just shop at Sears for the rest of your life or take advantage of these advances?
 
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Being able to pick different furniture combinations and see how they look in your empty home will be a fantastic tool for individuals just starting out. This will really show the worth of this AR technology on tablets.
For those that have existing furniture it does become a little bit more complicated. Imagine standing in one corner of a living room, and wanting a couch to appear against the wall and an existing coffee table between you and that virtual couch. Adding that layering will make things much more challenging to the developers. I suspect using a masking tool will allow it to be done.
This technology is going to have an incredible impact on the freelance home decorating industry. I imagine that other furniture retailer/manufactures each producing something similar. Since the items apps will not play with each other the end-user will develop a loyalty to one manufacturer for the decorating for each client.
 
I saw an article in a major 3D imaging magazine that said that all the photos in the IKEA catalogs were renderings. They model almost all the products they make and use high end renderers to make the "kitchen", "front room", "bed room" and other scenes used in their catalogs. that way they can assure perfect lighting and do last minute changes without expensive photoshoots. They already have the models to do this with, they just have to convert them to be used at a lower resolution.

Just do a Google on "IKEA uses renderings in catalogs" and you will se a bunch of articles with before/after graphics etc. Cool stuff.
 
This is just the beginning for AR-fueled iOS apps. Loads of exciting applications ahead across a wide range of use situations. This will go down as one of Apple's best moves.
 
jclardy said:
As a developer myself this really isn't that complex of an app. The largest amount of work will be getting all their furniture as 3d models (Which likely already exist, but probably not in a friendly format.)

The example app from Apple using ARKit essentially already does this - places a 3d model into space at a fixed point. The "difficult" part will be coming up a UI that makes it simple for everyone to use.

They also have a head start since ARKit won't even be available for end users till the fall, four months is more than enough time to get something like this usable when the difficult parts are already implemented in ARKit (plane detection, size estimation, and point tracking)
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You are correct. Ikea already has an online option to design kitchens (Don't know whether other rooms as well).
You put in the room size, windows and doors and click on cabinets etc. to place them.
3D view is also available of what one puts in.
BUT, it is very unintuitive and not Apple like at all.
 
ersatzplanet said:
Just do a Google on "IKEA uses renderings in catalogs" and you will se a bunch of articles with before/after graphics etc. Cool stuff.
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you can read mainstream articles about the practice of using renderings in catalogs.
http://time.com/money/3207951/ikea-furniture-3d-images-technology-art-catalog/
What is not commonly known is that Ikea makes different versions of their catalogs for different counties because of 'cultural sensitivities'.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/oct/02/ikea-apologises-removing-women-saudi-arabia-catalogue
 
bitfactory said:
So that means this dork from Planet of the Apps is back to square one?
(yes I watched the first half of that God-forsaken garbage fire of a show). He was saying they have the best marker-less AR on the market.
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He got hit by the mother of all sherlocks. He pitched his tech as unique; it is now a commodity. I have the sense that that Apple knew what was coming at WWDC and had this poor guy targeted from the start.

WRT Apple's PotA: I've seen enough to know I have seen too much.
 
Wilson Audio (the incredible - and incredibly and ridiculously expensive) speaker company had something similar back in 2013 - nothing quite utilizing VR in the slightest, but it had the camera take video of your room while you placed their speakers 'virtually' in your room via your iOS device.

This should be 50x better though - should be interesting to check out.
 
jclardy said:
As a developer myself this really isn't that complex of an app. The largest amount of work will be getting all their furniture as 3d models (Which likely already exist, but probably not in a friendly format.)

The example app from Apple using ARKit essentially already does this - places a 3d model into space at a fixed point. The "difficult" part will be coming up a UI that makes it simple for everyone to use.

They also have a head start since ARKit won't even be available for end users till the fall, four months is more than enough time to get something like this usable when the difficult parts are already implemented in ARKit (plane detection, size estimation, and point tracking)
Click to expand...

When you use their online design tool, all the furniture is there for you to use and place to see how it looks all in 3D as well. Been using their tools for 2-3 years now.
 
They should make an AR app for assembling their furniture. You spread out all the pieces on the floor, and the app scans them, recognizes the individual pieces, and then for each step, animates them onto the spot where you need to next sssemble them. And then of course when you indicate you're done with a step, you scan around your creation so far and it confirms if you've got everything right to that point.
 
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jclardy said:
As a developer myself this really isn't that complex of an app. The largest amount of work will be getting all their furniture as 3d models (Which likely already exist, but probably not in a friendly format.)
Click to expand...
Read the article: IKEA has already been doing this for years, so the models exist. What's different about ARKit is that the measurements will be way more precise as well as generate natural lighting.
 
Very innovative and useful AR implementation. Not only games participate in this cool technology
 
I'm already working on a similar app, and ARkit sounds really promising.
Unfortunately it will be supported on iPad pro only, so a lot of customers will continue to use my current version (compatible with Android).
But for those working with an iPad pro I think I'll be able to deliver a great user experience
 
They'll probably make you walk a mile around your own home in AR before you get to the piece of furniture you need!
 
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