Imagine you are traveling to Madrid for the first time and
you want to get to know all the must-see places such as Parque El Retiro, Museo
del Prado, Plaza Mayor and many others, or you just want to know a restaurant to for a nice dinner. If you don’t want to pay large amounts of
money to a tourist guide, Augmented Reality (AR) is the perfect solution.
Once in El Museo del Prado, again, you have the option of
paying a tourist guide, who will bombard you with information you will probably
forget by the time you arrive back to the hotel, or you have the option of
taking an interactive tour through the museum, which will enhance the
experience in a way you never imagined. In fact, there is a company called
Digital Binocular Station which is developing binocular stations
within the museums that with the use of AR, when you look around the museum using
the binoculars the objects, paints or statues come to ‘life’ in order to
enhance the experience of museums or even historic places and landscapes. Watch
the following video in order to get a better sense of this digital binocular
stations.
AR will not only show you the places you need to visit, it
will also take you there using GPS, give you insightful facts about
that place, but more interestingly it could allow you to see that same sight in
different time periods. Lets say you are in New York and the application takes
you to Time Square, you could see how that same place looked 10, 20 or even 100
years ago. How interesting would be to go to Berlin and see how the Berlin Wall
looked before it was demolished?
Below is a video that shows you an application that is
already available, called Rio that allows you to get to know Rio de Janerio, Brazil in a very interactive and
convenient way.
If you want to learn more the Digital Tourism Think Tankreleased an interesting
report talking about the potential and many applications that AR has
in the tourism industry.
From the business side, AR in tourism is also an excellent
business opportunity for Hotels and Restaurants, since business can post special offers and events through the applications. For example you walk near a
Hotel, you can watch virtually the rooms and even book a room. We believe that
AR will revolutionize tourism in every aspect and we can expect that in the
future people will be using more and more these applications when they travel.
We have now looked at how Augmented Reality will
evolve and impact several different parts of society. But as of now, we have
not really touch on the one of the main drivers of AR in society, the military.
As a reader of this blog, you might be aware of that fighter jet pilots have
already used AR functionality for a while already in their helmets.
The militaries around the world are now spending
considerable amounts of money in developing a mix of new AR and Virtual Reality
technology, as they see this as key ingredients in their future combat
operations. With the AR glasses coming to the market, it will be of an obvious
benefit for the normal soldier, as it can serve both as a communication device
and for informational purposes. In the upcoming Q-Warrior,
the soldier will have both access to map data, enemy locations, live stream
from drones, night vision and general information from the command central. .
With the introduction of the Oculus Rift, and their backing by Facebook, you can probably imagine the
soldier conducting training operations in a virtual world, with these glasses on. As an example, the Norwegian Army has started to incorporate these into the real world as
well. With the Oculus Rift you can also display real world images with a
digital overlay, just by having some cameras giving you the necessary
information. Imagine the driver, the commander or the operator of a tank.
Inside a tank you have limited eyesight, which also limits your handling abilities
in war situations. So what they started to experiment with is to place multiple
cameras on the outside of the tank, which are then displayed through the Oculus
Rift display. So as the operator move his head around, he will get displayed
the outside view according to the direction of your head. Teknisk Ukeblad (In Norwegian), also have a
video displaying this in practice.
We see this just as the first step of usage of the
likes of Oculus Rift in this context, later we believe you could easily add
digital overlays to these images. So the driver would be able to see
information about the vehicle, maps, the enemy etc. While the canon man, in
addition be will able to see his enemy and aim and control his canon through
the glasses, even through night vision. The possibilities are limitless, and we
believe this is just one example on how AR will revolutionize the army. It could very well be a first step towards developing a real life Iron Man.
Ever thought how it would be like to experience sex as the opposite gender? This is a question raised by the 12 year old movie Minority Report, when Tom Cruise's character goes to the hacker to extract a vision from the precog. The hacker mentions that one of his best-selling experiences is enjoying sex from the opposite gender. A first step of this can now be true if both of you are using the Google Glass, as a new app released called Glance lets you record your intimate activities and even allows to stream video from the other device so you see what you partner is seeing at the moment.
How did we get this far? After the initial device introduction to the intimate life of vibrators, dildos, beads and other sex toys, some even found their way into condoms, with vibrating rings and the sorts. A few pictures, cameras, recorders and the internet made a lot of them public and out for the world to see. The AR part of it started with the Kiss Phone, a phone with lips that could let you experience the kiss being sent by determining the temperature, pressure, speed and sucking force applied to one end and reproducing it on the other. Just like a phone, but sending a kiss instead of voice.
That looked really cool for couples suffering from long distance relationships or the sort, but now we are getting ready to include all other sort of devices to "improve" our carnal interactions, one of the most intimate human encounters. And it won't be far until we ask ourselves how far are we from using the helmet from Demolition Man? Acting as if sex was all about a rational encounter when it is all about the passion and attraction that no scientist can explain?
Lenina Huxley rationalizes her proposal by saying "After having observed your behavior this evening and my resulting condition, em, I was wondering if you would like to have sex". John Spartan's enthusiasm is waned when he is handed the helmet, and more surprised when he gets the helmet off and is questioned why "they broke contact", to which he puzzled responds "I haven´t event touched you yet". His next proposal about doing it the old-fashioned way is answered with a clear "Eeeeeewww, disgusting! You mean....fluid transfer???"
In this way, we believe that so much introduction into this private area is really pulling couples apart, and setting a lot of pre-booting for an encounter to occur. Do you imagine being with your partner after a night out, start making out in the elevator home and once you reach your living room you are unable to copulate because you forgot to charge your Google Glasses? Do we now have to start saying we got "battery-blocked?". Or if you picked up someone at a nightclub and later cannot consummate because you have Google Glass and she has Apple Glass which are not compatible?
As a bonus, we will talk a bit about the porn side of the issue and how it is evolving in parallel. Remember our Ikea shopping post from a couple of days ago? Now you can use the same technology on Playboy's Netherlands edition, and once you scroll over the images with your camera, the pictures turn to life and start performing for you. All you need is a smartphone and the Layar app to turn a static printed magazine into a live video feed with additional content.
Now, how can you improve video footage using AR? Let's talk about the old and boring porn tapes that everyone has seen but no one publicly admits to doing so. We all now about the cheesy fake dialogues, porr settings and the lack of connection between the actors and the movie with the consumers on the other side of the screen. This can change as AR is incorporated in the equation. How you ask? Imagine you can immerse yourself into your desired scenario and with your desired partners doing whatever your mind can only imagine. No need to see actors "interacting" with actress as their directors want, you can become part of the movie and "interact" with the actress/actor/both in the way you want, with as many partners as you desire, in the setting you choose. What would that be like? And how much would you pay for it? Some companies are already working on this, like Pink Visual. Here is their presentation from the AVN's Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas
As you see, intimate life and porn have to very clear and separate paths. One is using AR to start including devices that could put distance between a couple, while the other is cutting the distance by placing the consumer inside the content and making him a part of it. So we need to ask ourselves, is this really the way we want to evolve? Is this path right, or did we missed something along the way? We have talked about how AR could ruin your dating life, and now we could argue it will ruin your personal encounters.
Ever wondered what sofa could you put in your living room, what color? What size? L-shaped or not?
We know…it’s hard to find out on a catalogue....... and that’s where Augmented Reality and IKEA can now address your problem!
With their new application, IKEA has taken the next step by moving their show room to your home. Just take your iPhone or iPad scan a page of the catalogue and voila you can see your new couch in your living room!
Want's a new sofa?
How about a new shelve?
"Offering a way of using mobile technology to enable to test products means the technology has a practical purpose and really helps customers visualize the way their homes could look." said Peter Wright, country marketing manager of Ikea in the UK and Ireland.
Check out how it works in this really cool advertisement
Have you already tried it? Let us know in the comment below what do you think about this app!
A few years ago I read a book, Super Sad True Love Story, a dystopian love story about people obsessed with superficiality driven by their wearable technology. The wearables, called "apparats" in the book, allow everyone to see instantly how everyone rates everyone else's attractiveness, called a "fuckability" rating, in a bar or any other social environment. Everyone rates everyone, constantly. The book was published in 2010 and in the three years since I read it, I've seen many aspects of the book slowly come true.
Imagine my horror when I discovered a new app, Lulu, which allows women to rate men with a number evaluation and hashtags such as "#ObsessedWithHisMom and #GoneByMorning." Despite Lulu's claim that this is "unleashing the power of girl talk" and my position as a proud feminist, let me confirm that I find this app straight up creepy, not to mention cruel. No one should have to have to relive a history of dating missteps each time they meet someone new. Many men agreed that apps like Lulu aren't ethical, and in response Lulu has now required that men opt-in to the site.
How long will it be before technology like this is wearable and part of augmented reality? How long will it be before your Tinder "swipe yes's" are recorded and shared? Before your crowdsourced physical desirability is viewable in glasses or contact lenses? What effect could this have on our dating behavior?
In this video, one woman takes a comedic look at how Google glasses might affect men's dating behavior.
Pushing the bounds of wearable apps, we can envision more disturbing situations, as seen in the video "Sight" below:
How ethical is it for someone to research you on social networks before a date? For them to use an app to improve their dating "performance"? Are these technologies a boon for the socially awkward or a manipulation of your dating partner?
Personally, I'm a bit old-fashioned about this stuff. If I pay more attention to my phone than my dinner date, at the end all I've earned is a closer relationship with my device. I do my best to keep my phone in my bag, but wearables combined with augmented reality technology imply that our attention has the potential to be constantly divided. The idea of a guy using an app to take me home would certainly feel like a manipulation... if I found out. But what if I didn't? Would ignorance be bliss?
It's possible that companies that advocate for wearables and the associated apps will succeed in shifting public opinion to become comfortable with these technologies and potential privacy invasions that they present. Alternatively, some trends indicate that people are becoming less comfortable with their private information being public, even on current social media. For example, many reports indicate that teens are abandoning Facebook and flocking to Whatsapp and Snapchat precisely because these apps allow them to more strictly control the audience that sees their information.
My prediction is that we will become more comfortable with wearables at the same time as we seek to share personal information with only a smaller, tighter network of who we consider our real friends, not our "facebook friends."
So far we have discussed some of the applications of
Augmented Reality (AR), such as in medicine, in this post we will be discussing
AR in education. In the area of education AR has incredible potential, so
far there has been some advances, but there is a lot more that can be done in
order to increase significantly the value to the learning experience on every
level. There is no better way to learn than interacting with the
objects we are learning about. Imagine a second grade teacher reading a book to
their students, as she mentions some of the characters of the story they
come alive and kids can interact with them. This will bring storytelling to a
whole new level.
Now imagine a student trying to study the human body and
its parts reading and listening are essential for education, no question about
that, but education deepens when we include creation and interaction. It is not the same for students to read the content from a textbook than interacting with a body. There are
apps already in the market that do exactly this. For example, Anatomy 4D,
which you can download from your smartphone or tablet, allows you to print out images from the human body just as the ones we
see in regular textbooks. But the magic happens when you use the app and
overlay your device over the previously printed images, the student can then engage into an active learning experience getting to know the body parts in a
more interactive and fun way.
We could think of many other topics such math,
science, history and many others where augmented reality will revolutionize the
learning experience making it more digestible, interactive and certainly more
fun.
The following video is a perfect example of little girl
in third grade using her iPad to solve a math problem. The moment she overlays
the iPad over the paper where the problem is, she can watch an interactive
explanation helping her to figure out the solution.
Every day we continue to hear how school systems, all over
the world, should put more effort into fostering problem solving skills into
students from all ages. We think that AR could bring many solutions to this
global need. AR could be used along with
Project Based Learning, which is a method where students gain knowledge and
skills by working for an extended period of time to investigate and respond to
a complex question, problem, or challenge. AR is the perfect way for groups of
children to thrive in a project based learning environment. Each child can use
their Augmented Reality capable device to build or help solve problems.
Nowadays practically every teenager owns a smartphone,
teachers in schools and universities battle every day to prevent students from
using their smartphones/tablets during lectures. Wouldn't it be more beneficial
if teachers could leverage this fact to encourage students to use their
devices to learn on different topics through AR? We see a lot of opportunity in AR
in the future, we wouldn't be surprised to see textbooks replaced by this
technology or at least watching them working together in every classroom.
Books in the future will most likely be adapted to suit this technology. So we
must ask, is AR the future in Education?
One of the areas in which Augmented Reality is really making a difference for everyone is medicine.
As the process of decoding the human genome continues, 23&me has become one of the most known services in genetics. This company provides you with a detailed genetic analysis that shows how prone you are to certain diseases or conditions. At the same time, you can build your own family tree and see how the mixture of different families and races increases or decreases the likelihood of certain conditions. And finally, you can get in touch with people that have similar genes as you and try to see how specific genes affected their lives! All this is achieved through a $100 mail-it-yourself kit, which includes a small medical apparatus for you to send a blood sample.
So what does Augmented Reality have to do with this? Well this is the first step, as the world we live in is characterized by exponentially growing information and increased interconnection of data. Imagine you are enjoying an afternoon trek in Cinque Terre, Italy, and suddenly fall and get a concussion that knocks you out. Your partner rushes you to the local hospital, where the physician gets instant access to your digital records just from your thumbprint. She sees all your information in a tablet or even wearable glasses, which could even tell her instantly your blood pressure, locate the hematoma at the place of trauma, and show your white and red blood cell movement. There is no loss of precious seconds to take care of your injury. Now imagine the same situation, but you have a heart attack in the streets of Pasadena. Think of how valuable that information would be for the paramedics treating you and how much more prepared the doctors would be when you arrived at the hospital.
Even further, imagine being able to perform DIY checks for your blood pressure, sugar levels, calorie intake or even weight that automatically record your levels and maintain updated daily records accessible to your doctor to track daily variance and how you stick to your diet. It's possible that your bathroom mirror could provide your daily checkup while you brush your teeth!
Did you know that less that 20% of all doctor's appointments require that the physician actually touch the patient? That means that 80% of diagnostics could be performed remotely, via chat or by sending pictures. This could allow patients to speak with a doctor quickly, prevent unnecessary visits and transaction costs, and sensibly reduce healthcare expenses. These developments, along with the preventive diagnostics of small and relatively inexpensive wearable devices, are completely changing the medical environment. Companies are even making the devices more imperceptible and even fashionable to prevent the embarrassment of carrying an ugly medical device.
These changes will also affect more intense and invasive procedures. How many people avoid their checkups because of the way colonoscopies or prostate exams are conducted? Imagine how many diseases could be prevented if people were able to virtually go through those procedures. The technology is almost there, and the initial trials are being carried in order to avoid intrusion on the patient, one of the biggest traumas during certain exams. At the same time, robotics and augmented reality are tearing down the walls of physical presence of doctors during procedures. Some surgeries have already been conducted with physicians located miles away and operating a terminal connected through the internet to the operating room. We can now even have a multidisciplinary team of doctors in 5 continents and participating together in the same surgery. They could see your whole diagnosis, identify possible problems during the procedures, and react faster to them.
Imagine the implications for remote or underserved towns that currently lack facilities due to high costs and low populations. Specific modern hospitals could be built at almost no cost and with little staff with a few minor futuristic devices and physicians with regular office hours connected by Internet. We could virtually build a hospital everywhere just with the internet and electricity.
Scientist are already testing the "cancer pill", a pill shaped analysis tool that will screen your whole body from inside and detect the possibility of cancer surfacing, converting damaging control medicine into completely preventive medicine. This type of pill is being tested for diverse diagnostics, and we could consider them to be a part of our routine weekend check-up while they transfer tons of data to our files like the Spider Robots from Minority Report.
Other implications for medicine include advancements made in prosthetics and the possibility to build functional exoskeletons for disabled persons and allow them to walk again. Even more, initial trials are being done to get 3D printers to create organs! This will allow thousands of people waiting for organ donors to get organs quickly and prevent potential rejections due to incompatibilities, as they could be designed from scratch to match the patient.
All these developments are making medicine more personalized, so the doctor of the future will prescribe the drug you need to cure your problem and not a generic cure based on a generic condition. Physicians will know how you react or how people with your genes react to the common cold and know that Drug X is much more effective than Drug Y. This information would continue to build your personal file and the personal files of thousands of people worldwide that share part of your genes...
Augmented Reality is building a faster, more efficient, and personalized health system. Imagine medicine based in prevention, doctors that are constantly updated about patients' developments even though they are miles away, and people proudly using sleek and fashionablecheck-up devices that screen them for diseases without being invasive.
For further information, we recommend these two amazing talks about what the future is weaving for augmented reality in a medical environment:
In the previous two blog posts we have given you a small introduction to Augmented Reality (AR) and seen the difference between Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality. In this post, we will look more at the history and evolution of Augmented Reality.
Augmented Reality as a concept is born
For most people AR as a concept can be seen as something very new. And the introduction of new products and gadgets like Google Glasses has created an increased awareness around it, and is sometimes referred to as the "wearable revolution". But as this blog will show you, AR, is a lot more than just wearable gadgets. When that is said, similar to most technologies, AR has been present in labs and research institutions for nearly half a century. The introduction of AR, can be tracked back to Ivan Sutherland, a scientist from University of Utah who in 1965 introduced a head-mounted display, with mirrors attached, allowing the wearer to see a very limited virtual world superimposed on the real world. The display was too heavy for a human head to carry, and was therefor suspended from the ceiling in the lab (See below for pictures)
Source: http://www.computerhistory.org
Augmented Reality as a name is born
The name Augmented Reality (AR), was first introduced in 1992, by Tom Caudell, working for Boeing. He was working in an area where also the US Army and related industries was looking at Augmented Reality, as a way to improve their manufacturing and engineering process. They used AR to present very simple layers on top of the real world (i.e. in the process of laying cables in certain airplane components, the software and the hardware, could indicate where which cable should be placed, without the user having to look up in manuals for every single one)
During the 90s there was a rapid technological development, which also lead to a rapid development in the space of AR. 1999 is by many seen as the turning point for AR, when Hirokazu Kato introduced the ARToolKit, an open source software package which is still one of the main technologies used for today's AR applications. The software would be taking output generated by a simple camera and overlaying it with simple virtual 3D objects
Augmented Reality today
As we moved into the new century mobile computer devices became more apparent (including mobile phones and smart phones), we saw the introduction of GPS and compasses into mobile devices and wireless data communication was introduced. All this created a foundation for several projects looking at combining this with camera processing (Cameras was becoming integrated into phones). And as of this, we saw the introductions of different Augmented Reality Browsers, which basically uses the camera on your smartphone, the GPS and data available on the World Wide Web, to display virtual information on top of the image of reality you see in your display. Examples of such browsers today are Accrossair, Google Goggles, Google Skymap etc
Then as many people are aware of, Google launched its Google Glasses for developers and testing in February 2013, and is expecting to release them to the public during 2014.
So looking at what Sutherland came up with in 1965, Google now is taking the same concept to the next level. Google Glasses are now more like a wearable computer, with a small optical head mounted display and will display smartphone like content in a hands-free fashion and you can communicate with it through your voice. Stay tuned for more information around today's
usage of Augmented Reality and the gadgets available, or soon to be.
In the previous blog, we referred to augmented reality as the
computer systems that overlay a virtual 2D or 3D model to the human perception
of reality -- all in real time!
In this blog, we will see how “Augmented Reality” works.
To understand how augmented reality works, we first need to differentiate "Augmented Reality" from “Virtual Reality”. Both augmented reality and virtual reality are generated by computer
systems. But their similarity ends there.
Virtual reality is an interactive 3D digital environment into which you are completely immersed. Everything you
experience in virtual reality – what you see, hear or interact with - is all within
and limited to the virtual-world. The virtual-world is completely
distinct and unrelated to the real-world, as you cannot sense the virtual-world or the objects in it. For instance: in virtual reality you may experience driving a car, but in reality you may not even be sitting in one.
Virtual Reality: Distinct virtual and real world environments.
Augmented reality, on the other hand, has digital information
overlayed on the real-world you are experiencing. Your sense of the real-world
remains unchanged, and it is only your perception that is being enhanced. The digital
information overlayed on to the real-world could be any kind of information – text,
image, map, blueprint, 2D or 3D model, animation, video, etc. Considering the car driving experience, here you will be driving a real car in real world, and augmented reality will overlay your view of the world with additional information that will enhance your experience. In the following images, augmented reality adds information such as distance in km, speed limit, navigation, traffic warnings, and other alerts.
Augmented reality can be conceived as – bridging real and
virtual worlds.
Because of the nearness of augmented reality to the
real-world, it is much more interesting and finds far more areas of application
than virtual reality. The success of smart phones has boosted the practical application and use of augmented reality. As a result, since 2009, "augmented reality" has been a more commonly searched term on Google than "virtual reality".
Interest
over time: "augmented reality" vs "virtual reality"
(source: Google trends)
Smart phones and wearable devices, such as a Google glass, act as enabling devices for augmented reality. Essentially, augmented reality works by using the camera on the device to examine the surrounding world, feeding that image to the device's computer - which processes the image, gathers GPS coordinates and pulls data from the Internet. The device then projects the information onto the screen in front of the user, either the user's palm, a wall, or a display screen.
Since the camera on the device is the browser to the real-world, whatever is viewed through the camera will be augmented. For instance, if the view is that of a shopping mall, augmented view will display the location of shops, escalators, elevators, rest rooms, etc. If the view captured is that of a shopping aisle, augmented view will filter and display products of your interest or products on sale along with their price, ingredients, nutritional value and even customer reviews.
In future blogs, we will dive deeper into the application of augmented reality in different sectors, including education, medical, engineering, commerce, tourism, entertainment, military and many more, as well as its implications for social interactions and the ethics dilemmas embedded.
Hang tight and join us in the exploration of augmented reality and its many faces!
