101 - Augmented Reality

In the beginning..

I'm somewhat of a Technogeek, which is why I am sharing what I believe is a going to be a huge technology trend over the next few years (2011+), something so big that it will creep into all aspects of daily life, where I'm sure people will have found intriguing new and useful ways to use it.....

What am I talking about. Augmented Reality, or AR as it's commonly known.

This blog is dedicated to this subject, where I hope to follow the inflated expectations
(where we are today) into Gatners plateau of productivity. i.e useful real world aspects.

 

What is AR?

Most people have seen some form of AR already, just think of those mobile apps that shows you where places of interest are, via the screen of your mobile. like Wikitude:

fig 1. Wikitude World Browser

  

Augmented Reality is simply a term for describing the merging of a real visual environment with some virtual overlay, simply put to use technology to superimpose our real world with computer generated information.

fig 2. Milgram's continuum.

or AR is more formally defined as been anywhere on the extrema of the virtuality continuum as shown on Milgram's continuum.

It's all History

AR technology has been around since the early 60's with the first head-mounted displays (HMD), but has been primarily used for military applications, like heads-up displays in fighter aircraft. The term AR was apparently first used in the early 90's by an engineer at Boeing, for a system designed to help with Aircarft wiring diagrams.

Future?

With the prevalent adoption of Apple and Android consumerisation mobile devices, new technological innovations in this area, have now started to progressed to a stage, where it's out preforming any AR technology done on a PC with a camera for usefulness.

Also with the adoption of more smartphones and higher performing hardware devices, this is only going to become more apparent. 

All that's required to kick this off is going to be the right AR idea to be married to the right AR platform, to be made available to a mass market of smartphone users. Time will tell if the next generation of smartphones (5th) will be up to the job or not.

- Ross Oldbury -