If you ever downloaded a augmented realilty(AR) app, you understand how cool it is for a animated 3D object to suddenly appear in your physical place. The company Blippar is a great example, which allows businesses to create customized apps for their customers to have a more intimate experience with their brand. For instance, printed media can have a interactive video pop out of the paper through the use of augmented reality. Though businesses and individuals have been implementing augmented reality to showcase various things, AR media still feels like a task designated for the experienced coder or developer. This leads me to recognize one company that is making it easier for the lay-man to create engaging AR media.

Wikitude is a AR solutions company based in Salzburg, Austria, which provides a way for small budget companies or individuals to create their own apps without the hassle of coding. They have also released Wikitude SDKs for developers to utilize and post on the Wikitude World Browser(WWB). The WWB gives the augmented reality content exposure to people looking for it. For instance, if someone was looking for a AR catalog of shoes, they can use the browser to find shoe businesses with their 3D catalog of shoes. Exposure is also enhanced by the automatic content indexing to Google. Wikitude is also part of Worldwide Web Consortium(W3C) and Open Geospatial Consortium(OGC).

Wikitude uses location-based tech, where “the position of objects on the screen of the mobile device is calculated using the user’s position(by GPS or Wifi), the direction in which the user is facing (by using the compass) and accelerometer.” They have improved on this concept through the developer SDKs, which ultimately provided them the know-how to create a streamline way for the lay-man to create their own augmented reality content.

By using their Wikitude Studio, ” no more programming skills are needed.” There is no special software you need to download, since the studio is accessed through your web-browser. Simply open up Chrome, Firefox or Edge and start creating your own AR applications. Creating content is as simple as drag’n’drop, while still utilizing powerful 3D models and animations. The studio takes advantage of Wikitudes pioneering proprietary image recognition & tracking technology as well. With this, you can manage your content and upload it to the Wikitude app for the world to discover. Possibly even under 10 minutes.

The team powering Wikitude comprises of Marting Herdina (CEO), Andy GSTOLL (CMO), Philipp Nagele (CTO), Nicola Radacher, Andreas Hauser, Christian Ebner, Sarunas Tamasauskas, Simone Taliercio, Christine Mlynarik, Andreas Schacherbauer, Paula Montiero, Simon Friesenbichler, Yacine Alami, Nicolas Perrichot, Gabrielle Boccone, Philipp Breuss-Schneeweis, Roland Hufnagel and Markus Eder. Even with these genius minds working in tandem, they are always looking for the next leader to join their party. Go ahead and see if their are any posiitons of interest to you on their career page or just try out Wikitudes Studio.