Imagine a world in which, by simply holding up your mobile phone against a street scene, you can download information on restaurants buildings, tourist attractions and more. With Augmented Reality, or AR, all of this is possible and very soon it will be coming to your mobile phone.<\/p>\n
First coined in the 1990s, the term augmented reality describes a technology in which real-world scenes can be combined with digital data to provide users with rich information on what they are looking at. So, for example, you could be on holiday in a foreign city and unsure of where you are or where to find a particular building.<\/p>\n
Using AR you could scan the buildings around you and as you do so your display will be overlayed with additional information such as the names of buildings, restaurants and forex offices around you. Or perhaps you’re sightseeing over a European city. Again viewing the scene through your phone will pull up a map that will be overlayed on the scene, with details of street names, building names and addresses and popular sights.<\/p>\n
The same could be true of trying to find someone’s house. Viewing the street through your phone could, theoretically, overlay the names of all the homeowners in that particular street.<\/p>\n
Initially these types of tools could be used by businesses eager to promote their shopfront to potential customers. But there is also the possibility, with improving facial recognition, that AR could be extended to include information on people that you meet. With the proliferation of social networking sites, it is possible to imagine a world in which meeting someone for the first time could immediately pick up relevant information on them from sites such as Flickr, Facebook and Twitter.<\/p>\n
Naturally there are potentially very significant privacy issues around the level of information that can be accessed by using augmented reality. While most social networking services build in layers of privacy controls to their platforms, most users have no idea how to use these effectively. Which means that they could be exposing significant information about themselves on new, emerging services.<\/p>\n
Layar and Wikitude<\/strong><\/p>\n Even without facial recognition and other advanced forms of AR, augmented reality already has countless possibilities. These could range from educational applications such as layers of additional museum information, construction layers for visualising new buildings, navigation and tourist information as well as medical and technical applications.<\/p>\n One of the first augmented reality browsers available is Layar (http:\/\/layar.eu<\/a>) which is available for both Android-based mobile phones as well as iPhones. Layar includes a range of filters for viewing the world including Flickr, Wikipedia and Twitter. A good example of AR’s potential is Layar’s estate agency service which can overlay information on properties for sale. Scanning a street scene through Layar makes it possible to pull up information on houses for sale including price, facilities and pictures.<\/p>\n