Augmented Reality

Virtual reality used to be known as Holy Grail of technology and had many people invest their time and money on it and thus it led to the birth of Augmented Reality (AR), a sub technology of virtual reality in which computer graphics are layered onto a real world image became a reality. In the last decades it was used in research labs to demonstrate how to piece a complex machine together by modeling it in 3D even before it is built just like they show you in the Iron Man movie, where the hero is seen crafting his suit and in various research and military simulators. Our eyes with the help of our brain can see and understand a lot of objects but they cannot see the facts or the trivial data behind these objects. To do so we have to go to supplementary sources like encyclopedias or the internet. Sometimes the objects carry metadata like a text, barcode or RFID signals.

Instead of going to other sources to update the relevant information we can also go to other virtual eye which see more and augment the reality with additional information and required data in real-time. Cameras in smartphones are such virtual eyes which while we are focusing on an image or location, computes the GPS information and links the relevant information databases on the internet with picture or with location based information, retrieve data, integrate these data back into the cell phone screen and you can see the facts behind the reality as they are labeled onto them in real time even without realizing the mechanism that I mentioned ever took place thus making "Terminator” like vision no longer confined to just the realm of science fiction flicks.

The whole concept of augmented reality based applications are already available and in use on GPS enabled smart phones as location based service. Currently anyone with a smart phone like an iPhone or phones that supports Google Android or the latest Nokia based Symbian can enable this, where one would be able to peer at the world through the phone's camera and will see super imposed layered extra information streamed from dedicated servers that provides the service or from sites like Wikipedia or Google onto their phone screen about the physical things in front of them at which they are pointing the device.

Nokia in 2008 unveiled the “Point & Find” application that became a huge hit, a service currently only in Europe that uses a phone's camera to identify objects and present relevant information on screen in real time. Point and Find application combines real-time image processing and recognition technology with the phone's data connection and GPS location to link the camera's real-life images to related digital content and services. Barcode scanning has also been integrated. At the Consumer Electronics Show two years ago, Intel also demonstrated a concept device that could capture images with its built-in camera and overlay pertinent information on the display, such as restaurant menus, real time foreign language translations, and direction and orientation. Later Google came up with it “Goggles” application for the Android platform with more functionality which is similar to the Nokia’s “Point & Find”. The technology that has brought augmented reality initially to mobiles is called “Layar”. As the name suggests, it layers computer information on top of "reality" as seen through the phone's camera. Layar uses the phone's Global Positioning System (GPS) to work out where you are and what you are looking at. Different types of information appear on different layers: there's a sightseeing layer called Wikitude which contains tourist information about what's around you – the posts are linked to specific buildings and points of interest and pop up information as you pass by them by pointing your camera phone at the site of your interest.

As augmented reality about to be opened up to the mobile phone-owning masses, it has become an exciting field for development and new found applications. Developers are racing to find useful and interesting ways that computers can enhance our interaction with the real world.