Who
Dr. Blair MacIntyre and Maribeth Gandy founded aura Interactive in 2009. These two researchers have worked in the area of augmented reality, mobile computing and human computer interaction for almost 20 years. Their portfolio of projects include federally funded research, contract R&D for industrial sponsors, and external consulting projects across a wide variety of domains. For clients ranging from the Department of Defense to rock bands, MacIntyre and Gandy have developed proof-of-concept systems, deployed software/devices/installations, patents, and other intellectual property, as well as advancements in the state-of-the-art in mobile computing and AR.
Blair, currently an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Tech, has directed the GVU Center’s Augmented Environments Lab for since 1998. He has been conducting Augmented Reality research since 1991, with the goal of understanding the potential of AR as a new medium for games, entertainment, education and work. He has collaborated on a variety of AR gaming and entertainment projects over the years, and in the past few years has focused on handheld AR game design, interaction and evaluation. His research is supported by a variety of technology and content companies, including MediaPower, Turner Broadcasting, Sun Microsystems, Hewlett-Packard, Alcatel-Lucent, NVidia, Apple, Texas Instruments, Samsung, Qualcomm and Motorola and Nokia. He has written a wide range of academic papers, taught tutorials on Handheld Augmented Reality, and been Program Chair for the International Symposia on Wearable Computing (2000), Mixed and Augmented Reality (2003), and User-Interface Software and Technology (2003). He served as the guest editor of a ‘Mixed Reality’ special issue of IEEE Computer Graphics and Applications. He received a Ph.D. from Columbia University in the City of New York in 1998, and B.Math and M.Math degrees in Computer Science from the University of Waterloo in Canada in 1989 and 1991.
Maribeth, currently a Senior Research Scientist at Georgia Tech, is a computer scientist who is interested in not only building the technology to enable cutting-edge AR applications but in creating compelling and entertaining user experiences. To this end she often utilizes human computer interaction techniques for design and evaluation in the AR domain. She teaches the Video Game Design course at GT and over the past 10 years has developed a variety of entertainment applications for mobile devices, desktop computers, and museum installations. In her research she is developing hand-held AR games, as a means to explore which design processes, game mechanics, and interaction techniques are appropriate for this genre. She is also co-PI on an NSF funded project to develop cognitive games for older adults. In her consulting work she collaborated to integrate real-time AR effects into Duran Duran’s live concerts, has performed usability analysis and evaluation on prototype products for healthcare, communication, and entertainment, and has designed and/or implemented a variety mobile AR applications for advertising, gaming, and education.
