Chances are you’ve been exposed to the game Pokemon Go, the mobile app that lets people walk around the real world and catch digital renderings of our favorite pocket monsters. The game works by using the phone’s camera as a lens for the game to take in the environment of users surroundings, while the screen displays the pokemon for the user to interact with. Whether you’re a fan of the game or not, it is just one of the many examples of everyday AR technology. AR, short for augmented reality, is part of the next wave of great technological advancements, and already it is has some very exciting utilities and possibilities.
Most people think AR is something close to VR — virtual reality. However, the main difference between the two is that AR layers data and visual renderings over the users real life environment, while VR immerses the users into its own enclosed experience. VR creates its own experience, while AR is designed to heighten the reality of the users. There are many different types of AR, but mostly they can be broken down into four categories: marker-based AR, markerless AR, projection-based AR, and superimposition-based AR.
Marker-based AR, aka recognition-based AR, takes in a signature or symbol, for example a QR code, and uses the lens (or mobile device) to render an image on top of the layout. For example, before delaying the 2020 Olympics, Tokyo had set out to have street signs be translatable to any language through marker-based AR tech.
Markerless AR takes the users position relative to the environment around them, and using GPS, a compass, a gyroscope, and an accelerometer, provides data onto the users location. A user can use this type of AR to give them information about a building in front of them, or generate maps and directions, or render pokemon to catch.
Projection-based AR — good ol’ fashioned holograms. Tupac (RIP) at Coachella. It projects and alters the image based on how a user interacts with and manipulates the image. This is one of the more exciting types of AR, not just to live out all our Star Wars fantasies, but also for the improvement of fields and sectors that factor into our grow as a society. For example, surgeons may use projection-based AR to fine tune advanced procedures, architects can render houses before building them, classroom can have interactive models, and so on. The possibilities are endless.
Superimposition based AR is the interactive photoshop of the AR world. It takes in an image or feed and allows the user to super-impose details to the existing environment, such as overlaying a person with different outfits, or testing to see how that new couch would look in the living room. A home-shoppers dream. Or again in the medical field, a doctor might be able to super-impose an image of a patients skeletal structure over them to better diagnose a condition or problem.
Initial attempts by Google and Microsoft, with the Glass and Hololens respectively, have been panned by consumers for being impractical, bulky, and too expensive. However, Apple just announced that their new iPad line will be their first product built around AR, a possible sign for the direction of the company’s future products. Forbes predicts that AR Healthcare tech will grow in value by 38% annually until 2025. Pokemon Go was one of the first mobile games to utilize AR and it made over 1.8 million in its first week of release. As headsets get smaller, phones become more powerful, and lens more and more dynamic each year, so too will AR’s presence in our daily life.
