Augmented Reality has been hailed as the next big thing in mobile and home computing. Companies and Individual developers are now beginning to design applications to take advantage of these new ideas.
What is Augmented Reality?
Augmented Reality, often called AR, is a technology that blends real world action with virtual information and interactivity. In some cases, this means overlaying digital data over views of the real world as seen through a cell phone camera. More advanced applications project digital data directly onto a real-world scene.
Augmented Reality Applications in the Wild
In Japan, augmented reality games are quickly becoming the latest fad for teenage gamers. One popular version works through an iPhone, leading players to travel around town searching for virtual monsters, which they can then "capture" by pointing their camera at the target. In New York, iPhone's Gigaputt game turns the city streets into a virtual golf course, where players can swing their phone to mimic the action of a golf club.
A more practical application is location-based AR tagging, and developers have been hard at work making apps for just this function. Bionic Eye is an iPhone application that overlays information about fast food restaurants, subway stations and coffee shops over a view of the local surroundings. Wikitude works on Android equipped phones and iPhones to deliver information about local landmarks through the phone's camera and Layar is another Android-based augmented reality app people have been talking about.
Augmented reality is becoming popular among advertisers as well, not only for its obvious cool factor, but also as a practical way to let customers see and interact with products before buying them. Lego is a pioneer in this regard, with kiosks in some stores that allow kids to scan a box and see a 3-D version of the completed Lego project right there in the store.
Upcoming AR Applications
In the future, augmented reality applications may move beyond the smart phone and desktop. Companies such as VRLogic have already developed headsets for virtual reality and augmented reality use and developers are sure to take advantage of these technologies to build programs for them.
At MIT's Media Lab, Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry have demonstrated a wearable AR system called Sixth Sense that projects digital data onto the world. From accessing online book reviews when browsing a real-life bookstore to projecting a local map onto a wall to plan a journey, these kinds of developments take augmented reality to a new level.
Future application developers will have a wide variety of platforms to choose from when developing the next generation of augmented reality programs.
As for the next step after these apps, some companies and researchers are looking into developing augmented reality devices that operate from inside a contact lens or eventually through direct implants in the eye or brain.
From games to real-world tagging to real time location based information, new augmented reality apps are appearing daily. With all of the applications now found in apps stores for popular mobile platforms and the excitement of AR developers, augmented reality technology is poised to be one of the most influential things in the future of mobile computing.
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