Augmented Reality Applications in 2018
Augment reality is no more associated with sci-fi movies. While some experts think that augment reality is still in its infancy, we can already see real applications that may change our every day lives.
So, what is augment reality? The first association that comes to mind is Virtual reality which immerses user into artificial word using special gadgets that tracks body movements and show virtual world though display mounted on a head. Oculus Rift, Playstation VR and Samsung Gear VR are examples of such gadgets.
The key difference of augmented reality is its convergence with real world environment. Instead of isolating person from real world as virtual reality does, augmented reality enrich real environment with virtual objects. Simplest tool to use augmented reality is a smartphone. Simply download AR app and use it with smartphone camera. Pockemon Go that gone viral in 2016 is probably the most known example of augmented reality application.
But how AR can be beneficial in a daily life? For a regular consumer who is not a fan of mobile gaming, AR offers new ways to interact with every day environment in more efficient way. For example, visiting your local shopping mall, you can find out additional information about product when you take it into your hands, like it is shown in this witty video about future world where augmented reality is everywhere.
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Apart from entertainment industry we can see how AR penetrates multi-billion dollar industries.
Medicine
Lack of interactive materials in medical education has been a struggle for decades. While it’s not possible to allow fresh medical student to perform operation on a real patient, the partial solution was to create a lab simulator where students can train to perform treatments. However these simulators were overly simplistic and didn’t take into account all complexities of real therapy. Augmented reality can finally provide necessary solution where a scope of real emergency situations can be modeled and student can navigate and get feedback through AR glasses that project augmented reality into the real world.
Marketing
Augmented reality tries to disrupt old school market of outdoor advertising. While billboard is either a static printed banner or a display that shows a set a predefined pictures, with augmented reality it is possible to personalize advertising for each passerby. Also it makes possible to use any type of surface for showing ads. However it brings a new concern, since nobody wants to see ads everywhere. So, AR advertising might be a subject to regulations in a not so distant future where advertising companies will be allowed to show AR ads only on approved surfaces.
Travel
When you’re in a foreign country it can be hard to navigate. AR can help to navigate in environment and translate texts into your native language. This makes the process of ordering meal in a restaurant flawless just if your were sitting in your neighborhood restaurant.
Manufacturing
Fiat adopted technology called OPS Solutions. With this technology workers can see visual assembly instructions, which reduce risk on mistakes during assembly process and Boeing even has developed its own AR system called Skylight based on Google Glasses. Such system shows assembly hints to a worker aiming to reduce a chance of mistake in assembly process.
What’s next?
It’s obvious now that augmented reality will have a place in our future along with self-driving cars and 3D printed food. However a couple of challenges are still hinder the ability of AR technology for wide market penetration. Interacting with augmented reality through a smartphone is not the most convenient approach. Augmented reality glasses are still quite expensive and it is not clear whether customers will adopt this way of interaction with AR at all (we all remember Google Glass failure). Finding an optimal way for interaction with augmented reality while keeping such device compact might be the main challenges in future developments in augmented reality.
