An automotive magazine advertisement in Germany with applied Augmented Reality (AR).
There are moments where technology seems to take a quantum leap forward and the stuff we saw on Star Trek© back in day becomes a possibility for our daily life.
The latest viral buzz word is “Augmented Reality” or (AR).
The phrase was first used by Tom Caudell (a researcher for Boeing) back in 1990 to describe a display which was developed to apply virtual graphics on top of physically real images and defined Augmented Reality as “the interaction of superimposed graphics, audio and other sense enhancements over a real-world environment that’s displayed in real-time”.
While the term and the technology for Augmented Reality is over ten years old there has been a renewal of interest in it’s potential thanks to advancements in smart-phone technology and applications.
Imagine some of the incredible possibilities.
You are in your car with your family and travelling through a tourist area. You access the local visitor information on your smart-phone and you can treat the children to a three dimensional presentation of key historical points of interest (POI) broadcast directly on the passenger window of the car. Voila. Suddenly travelling with the tots has become tolerable for you and educational for them.
What about an application that displays the contents of your refrigerator on your iPhone (including the expiration dates) and can give you a three dimensional rendering of your to check if indeed you have eggs left for dinner?
This is exciting technology and the probability of its induction into our day to day living is not only plausible it is inevitable. And it is going to happen far more quickly than you anticipate.
Two relatively simple and effective examples of applied AR find themselves in basic business practice. Imagine a three dimensional video projection of yourself on a business card? The entire purpose of providing a business card is to be able to recall at a later date the portfolio of skills and contact information for your client. Thousands can be spent on designing an effective business card but what could be more memorable than a holographic representation of yourself speaking to your product or service offerings?
Employment recruiting could be revolutionized by the adoption of AR enhanced c.v. where the employer could truly put “a face to the name” of the potential candidate and observe both communication strengths and overall demeanor simply from a three minute recorded rendering. This could also be applied to the arts community with audition material recorded for future reference.
A powerful marketing tool indeed. Click below for some more impressive applications of Augmented Reality.
What interests me most about the adoption of AR is that it has the potential to make digital representation of “self” via a pixelated image (avatar) more socially acceptable.
If the concept can be grasped that the pixel projection of self as an entity is a valid one (authentically real) we could see a very rapid indoctrination for virtual worlds by mainstream business, education, healthcare and home users.
The visionary Gene Roddenberry would have been proud!
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Sources: Web March 25, 2010
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