By Mike Tomlinson
If there’s one thing we can take away from this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES), it’s that mobility is king. All computing is moving to mobile devices, but the coolest developments stem from bridging this mobile computing world with our natural movements and choices as human beings. I’m of course talking about Augmented Reality (AR)!
The big news during CES week came from Israeli optics manufacturer Lumus, who revealed a consumerized version of see-through visual displays which are currently used by military organizations around the world. Just think of its applications beyond the obvious military purposes—surgeons with these unusual looking spectacles will be using augmented reality to back them up during major surgeries. Pilots will use augmented reality to assist with complicated navigation during severe weather. But if that doesn’t sound like ‘Minority Report’ enough to you, know this - glass manufacturer Corning has developed a completely transparent glass electronic display, opening the door in the near future to our own cars overlaying important information and warnings onto our windshields as we drive about town. Even Google is getting into smart cars with AR-- but more on that in my next blog post.
We have barely touched the surface of consumerized augmented reality even though some companies are ahead of the curve and have started using AR as an extension of their marketing and sales divisions. IKEA has integrated augmented reality into their socially-oriented sales approach, allowing users to download an app that, when pointed at their living room, will overlay any of IKEA’s products onto the screen. This gives would be buyers an idea for which IKEA furniture would look best in that room. Amazon announced last year the development of Amazon Flow, a mobile AR app that scans barcodes and provides reviews, videos and prices for what it was you scanned. Just last week, Japanese electronics company Omron announced an app that will instantaneously translate text from one language to another, simply by pointing your phone’s camera at what you need translated (Chinese food, anyone?).
And soon, Google’s Goggles app will be able to visually identify any object you place within its frame of view and retrieve information about that object from the internet. The possibilities are endless, and it’s a great time to be an augmented reality proponent (and to have millions of dollars to invest into fledgling AR companies). Yet, with each advancement made in AR, more questions and complications come with it. In my next blog post, I’ll dive into the challenges in augmenting our own lives to exist in a growing digital world, reflecting the gray areas that rise up from the competing demands of these dual realities. Stay tuned!
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