Augmented reality is finally getting real
August 2, 2012
(Credit: iOnRoad)
As smartphones explode in popularity, augmented reality is starting to move from novelty to utility, Technology Review reports.
Apps featuring augmented reality are available for everything from gaming to driving to catalogs.
Early augmented-reality smartphone apps used a device’s GPS and digital compass to determine your location and direction. More recently, app makers have begun incorporating computer vision and increasingly powerful processors to provide greater accuracy.
Examples:
- CrowdOptic‘s software can recognize the direction in which a crowd of people have their phones pointed while taking photos or videos at events, and invite the group to communicate, share content, or get more information about the object of their attention, via an app.
- iOnRoad offers an augmented-reality collision-warning app for drivers using smartphones that run Google’s Android software (an iPhone version is in the works).
- Project Glass will be available in early 2013.
- At Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, visitors can use iPads at a dinosaur exhibit to see how the beasts would have looked in real life.
- The Ikea catalog now has Android and iOS apps that interact with the catalog.
Comments (3)
by asiwel
What I have always wanted to live to see and enjoy is the day when airlines hand out glasses (or I can use my smart ones) to look out the window at 20,000 feet at interesting landscape features going by … and be told what I am looking at, the history, geology, etc. People would begin to pay extra for window seats on sunny days! Of course, this will be great as well (for the passengers) in cars on long trips or for people visiting unfamiliar places (parks, cities, farmlands, etc). But holding up a little phone and trying to look through it leaves a lot to be desired.
by Marcos Marin
So cloning dinos will be obsolete before it starts?
by MrFriendly
I’ve tried iOnRoad, and it works remarkably well. Really cool app.
It’s really going to be amazing to walk around with a smartphone and/or AR glasses, and see relevant information pop up for certain objects/people of interest.
Really cool future coming.