Augmented Reality: Coming Soon To A Hand Near You
July 14, 2009 at 10:55 am
Just back from London where there’s a lot of talk about social and mobile, two areas that are about to explode according to my sources! One veteran who’s been involved in this space since 1994 as one of the earliest Flash developers said that it’s the ‘first time in 10 years’ she’s so excited about what’s happening in the space. More about social later in the week, but first mobile.
Mobile is not just about getting Twitter on your iPhone, telling your friends to ‘come join me on Qik’. There are way more viable commercial applications going on. One that has particularly captured my imagination is Augmented Reality (see what wikipedia says).
Skip back to 1999 when I first started working in the online space. The ultimate dream back then was to have special offers ‘beamed’ at you as you walk past expensive department stores, or specialist stores in your city. It never quite happened… until now. It’s just about to.
What Is Augmented Reality (AR)?
It’s the blending of what you see around you with digital information onto your mobile phone. The real world mixed with digital into your hand. Augmented reality is already in use in movies, games, military, and medicine. Now it’s coming to a mobile near you. It’s about to explode with a whole host of commercial applications.
Good example of how it will be used in advertising. Thanks to this excellent article from The Next Web where I picked up the vid.
At Wimbledon, Mobilizy worked with IBM to develop an application for the T-Mobile G1 phone that displayed real-time information about matches in progress, as well as dining and transportation options for fans.
Interesting Commercial Applications
Applications like Layar and Wikitude.me, as well as projects in the research stage at Nokia, use a phone’s global positioning technology to determine a person’s location and use the phone’s compass to discern the direction the device is pointed. In this way, the phone can guess what the user is seeing. The augmented-reality application then pulls in information about points of interest in that sight line and displays it on top of the camera view.
Layar is a free download for people in Amsterdam to look through the camera on their phones and see information about nearby restaurants, ATM’s, and available jobs displayed in front of buildings that house them. The information is provided by companies like Hyves, the Dutch social networking site, and ING, the financial services company. The businesses pay a fee to SPRXmobile, the privately held company based in Amsterdam that developed Layar. (That was lifted from the New York Times at the weekend – note this article was in the business section, not entertainment or technology)
I see huge potential for location-based advertising, travel devices, training and education. It will even bring a whole new dimension to working out those opaque Ikea assembly instructions!
Imagine standing on O’Connell Street Dublin. Point your mobile at the GPO and get a history of the building, architectural notes, opening hours, etc. Turn around to face Clerys and you could receive special offers and price comparisons on in-store items. Fancy a bite to eat? Get restaurant reviews, directions on how to get there, even touch the phone icon to book ahead for a good table. Introducing Augmented Reality for tourists will add a whole new dimension to their experience. It will put control back in the hands of the tourist who can guide their own journey around the city. It will make tour guides defunct! It is my belief that Dublin lends itself particularly well to this as the city centre is small enough to get mapped easily. And we are a tech friendly lot – yes really!
Here’s a basic iPhone app for getting tube directions (the sound’s a bit poor):
Gimicky Use in Media
Here’s a gimicky use of Augmented Reality that Radio 1 did last year. They were giving out tickets for a free concert. Anyone who didn’t get a ticket got a commiseration email with a special code in it. Print the code, hold it in front of the computer and hey presto – a band in your hand. Skip to 44 seconds to see it in action:
Sony PSP Augmented Reality Game “Invizimals”
Due to be launched in August for the Christmas ’09 market, Invizimals is a new hunt and capture game that utilises augmented reality. Developed for PSP, you can have a sneak preview here:
While gaming, education, and advertising lend themselves particularly to AR, my only concern is around imagination. What happens to our children’s imaginations when their consumption of books and magazines displays augmented reality versions of the characters?
PS – read Neville Hobson’s analysis of the Morgan Stanley intern report on what’s hot for teens. Or if you haven’t got the time, let me tell you:
What is Hot?
- Anything with a touch screen is desirable.
- Mobile phones with large capacities for music.
- Portable devices that can connect to the internet (iPhones)
- Really big tellies
What Is Not?
- Anything with wires
- Phones with black and white screens
- Clunky ‘brick’ phones
- Devices with less than ten-hour battery life
Tags: Augmented Reality, Layar, Travel & Tourism
