In the 21st Century, no question you have will go unanswered if the promise of augmented reality really comes true. Your smartphone equipped with augmented reality will identify and describe in sound, images, and/or moving 3D objects anything, anywhere you point your smartphone camera at. The real world will have become a place that you can “mouse over” and “click” with your phone and your reality will become augmented by all the data that the phone can assemble on that object—visualize the technology depicted in the Tom Curse flick “Minority Report”. (I wonder if it will work when you point your camera phone at a person.)
Among others Qualcomm recently recommitted to the technology. At the end of June, the company announced plans to offer an augmented reality platform and software development kit (SDK) to enable vision-based augmented reality applications. On November 10, Qualcomm teamed up with Unity Technologies, which claims to offer the development platform of choice for both 2D and 3D game development on mobile platforms. Qualcomm is making its Augmented Reality Extension available for Unity. Now, game developers like Trilogy Studio, creator of MTV’s “Pimp my Ride” game can use Qualcomm’s platform to add augmented reality functionality to games they develop or that’s the theory.
The poster child for this SciFi technology is the Dutch company Layar, who’s CEO Raimo van der Klein was featured this year in Time magazine’s September 9th issue in the article “Tech Pioneers: 10 Start-Ups That Will Change Your Life.” Layar’s Reality Browser, uses the smart phone's GPS data, accelerometer, compass and gyroscope to determine where its user is and what direction he’s pointing his camera. The browser then overlays information about whatever the user’s camera is viewing, for example, a historic building, which appears in the phone’s display along perhaps with a decades-old photo of it—as the Time article suggests.
Another company providing both the platform for as well as the augmented reality applications is Artificial Life, which released its third quarter results this week showing a 21 percent growth in revenue along with a 29 percent boost in income over the previous quarter of 2009. The company attributed the growth to its Opus-M, a modular m-commerce platform that can turn a brick-and-mortar storefront to a secure on-line business, with augmented reality to enhance the shopping experience. The company also produces a line of iPhone/iPad games that it’s porting onto smartphones running Android and Windows Phone 7 Operating Systems.
Last year there was a major push to bring augmented reality applications and browsers to mobile devices equipped with GPS, cameras, compasses, and accelerometers. In July this year the Augmented Planet website cited 54 new augmented reality iPhone applications published in July was 54 bringing the total to 605 such applications available for the iPhone. Juniper Research proclaimed the mobile augmented reality market will reach $732 million by 2014, fueled by paid application downloads, subscription services and advertising.
In a world where the smartphone has become the electronic appliance for everyman, there is a major push by hardware and software vendors to pack more sensors, communications, and multimedia technology into this mobile device. Thus, it’s becoming an amalgam of artificial intelligent concierge, man Friday, and entertainment center for the multitasking, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disordered worker bees we've all become. Augmented Reality is yet another means of the machine adapting to the personality of its owners.
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