"Create Your Mayo Clinic Health Experience"

A direct link to the above video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z7jDY3sbrs

When US company GoConvergence was hired by The Mayo Clinic to supervise the creation of a new permanent installation at the Mall of America, they knew one of the elements they wanted to add was Augmented Reality (AR). They put out a call for proposals to the major players in this exciting new industry, and who did they hire? Talking Dog Studios, from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada.

What is AR? Talking Dog president Rob Bryanton explains: “If you’ve ever watched a football game and seen that yellow down line superimposed on the field, then you’ve seen a form of Augmented Reality. That down line isn’t really there, but sophisticated technology superimposes it on the video to make it seem as if it’s real. Any time you see real-time information or graphics superimposed in a way that connects them to the world of what the camera or the user is seeing, that’s AR”.

 Create Your Mayo Clinic Health Experience is a permanent installation now open at The Mall of America. Amongst the various interactive displays throughout the installation encouraging healthy living, there are three kiosks which feature software designed by Talking Dog Studios in collaboration with Regina's Asmoteknologies Ltd. These kiosks invite visitors to interact with highly detailed animated 3D models of the heart, the head, and various joints. Users can rotate the models to see them from any side they choose, and labels identifying various parts of the model or providing interesting facts fly in and out as the models rotate.

The 3D models were developed in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic’s team of illustrators, and are both medically accurate and photo-realistic. Optimizing our software and these models so they would display at their full resolution and frame rate within the display was a unique challenge, and is one of the things that people find most exciting when they first experience these remarkable kiosks. This level of realism represents a major leap forward in Augmented Reality, and many hours of hard work by the Talking Dog team of programmers and designers, which include Rene Dufour-Contreras, Ryan Hill, plus Tony Mountjoy and Aaron Thompson of Asmotek.com.

For more information please contact Rob Bryanton at Talking Dog Studios, 306-790-4008.