Augmented Reality: As Real as it Gets

If location aware search and other mobile mapping technologies were hot sometime ago, hold on to your hat. A new wave of innovation in the mobile market will bring augmented reality to the smartphones, allowing users to interact virtually with their surroundings. A recent spate of game-changing applications for mobile devices have been emerging over the past few months.

Augmented Reality (AR) refers to technology that superimposes computer generated content over live images. The technology, which has been used in gaming and military applications on computers, has been around for years. But thanks to more sophisticated devices, faster wireless broadband networks, and new developments at the chip level, it has become inexpensive enough to put it into smartphones and tablets.

Even though these are still early days for this technology, chip vendors like Qualcomm are giving demonstrations. AR will have a huge impact on the smartphones in the coming years.

Just as location based services have begun to change how wireless subscribers use their cell phones and marketers reach an increasingly mobile audience, AR will go a step further, bringing a wealth of collected data to the users' fingertips.

Today GPS and other location based technologies allow people to track and find friends on the go. It allows them to 'check in' at particular locations. As location services are married to AR technology, mobile subscribers have the opportunity to allow the crowd sourced data about a particular location tell them about their surroundings. It is now possible to combine a regular pictorial view with added data from the internet via the video function of a mobile phone's camera, just as the fictional Terminator was able to overlay its view of the world with vital information about its surroundings.

In the future, some AR applications will come preloaded on the smartphones. In many countries, cell phone owners can download an application called 'Layer' that uses the phone's camera and GPS capabilities to gather information about the surrounding area. Layer then shows information about restaurants or other sites in the area, overlaying this information on the phone's screen.

So in case a user needs facts and other information about the neighborhood and the people who lived there, he can get it embedded onto the screen with the help of AR. And by clicking on an icon, he could hear audio, see video, or read text about what happened there. Other visitors could leave virtual comments about the tour-maybe someone would leave a virtual note letting you know of a good pizza place a block away.

Alcatel-Lucent recently demonstrated augmented reality video conferencing at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2011. Utilizing the 4G LTEnetwork, low latency video processed by advanced computer vision algorithms creates an interactive communications experience as if the person is looking at other participants through a window rather than viewing a computer screen. Real-time data overlays augment the video conferencing experience.

Indeed there are some AR applications already available. The iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, which includes a built-in compass in the phone, support many AR apps.

Nokia announced that it plans to start rolling out its augmented reality tool for mobile phones last year.

In India, Idea Cellular has also used the AR service to target the youth and launched a 1-month campaign using mobile based AR in metros to supplement the campaign 'Use Mobile Save Paper' running in other mediums like electronic, print, and online.

AR is a precocious new technology-a spin-off from Virtual Reality (VR). But unlike VR, which makes you believe to be in a fantasy place, AR enhances perception of the real world.

Akanksha Singh
akankshas@cybermedia.co.in