The Current State of Augmented Reality
One thing that has been popping up a lot lately is the mention of “Augmented Reality”. The idea of it is that an information layer is superimposed onto a live video feed. Typically, this information layer will adjust as you interact with the surrounding environment.
I was already aware of the concept of augmented reality, even if I wasn’t fully familiar with the term; but this promotional video for an Android App called Layar definitely brought it all home. You can see from the video the current state of the technology, and it can give you an idea of how it is likely to unravel at least in the near future.
Despite making its rounds in the news quite a lot lately, the technology isn’t as new and shiny as some people think. Marketing agencies have discovered the power of augmented reality advertisements lately, counting on peoples curiosity to bring them to the website. This is an odd way of advertising. Rather than filling the printed page with the branding of the product or with some eye-grabbing imagery, the audience is provided with a relatively meaningless group of shapes accompanied with a link to their website, which we later find out is a base for a 3D “projection”.
Location Based Services are a brilliant use for the technology, as the Layar application has demonstrated. The problem with Layar at the moment is that the information it provides is limited. Layar relies on what is called “layers” for providing information. These layers are limited to what are created and submitted to the website by third-party developers. At present, there are only six available layers for the application as the API is still in it’s infancy. I can’t help but think that the initial adoption of the app will be largely due to the hype it is currently developing, but surely as the API and its services mature, also will the depth of information it can provide.
I suppose that and ideal use of the technology would be to actively scrape the information from the net with use of semantic web services. This will provide the user with a wealth of information and not limit them to what is submitted to the commercial system. At this present time however, such use could prove troublesome for reliable information and only a colossal improvement in web standards would allow for such use. A more achievable problem that could be solved in the near future is that of mapping items at different altitude, rather than mapping items as if they are all at the same flat plane. This can be done by using the GPS & accelorometers of a mobile device, along with utilizing richer map terrain information to calculate angles.
Despite recent developments, it is apparent to me that this technology is still in its infancy. There are two problems I see for the technology to see mainstream adoption of augmented reality browsers on the commercial market. Firstly, augmented reality currently feels gimmicky, it provokes a “Hey, this is new! How cool is that?” sort of response which eventually dies down. This is due to the fact that, at least in the commercial field, augmented reality hasn’t provided much of an impact on its intended target audience. AR Browsers are just now providing us with a good use for the technology, but lacking the provision of information that will be useful for the user to embrace them in their everyday lives. Secondly, the amount of mobile devices with hardware that can support the technology so far are limited. There is the iPhone, at current there are few manufacturers willing to compete against it (HTC being the one company that seems stands up to Apple and actually give them a run for their money). With the arrival of the Android Platform however, the software aspect of developing a smartphone has become less of a burden. Ideally this means less development costs and lower prices, and bigger mainstream adoption of compatible devices. Augmented reality could ultimately be the key selling point of devices which have the necessary hardware.