Industry, business, transparency -future of true augmented reality

Augmented reality is still evolving. There are a lot of great ideas and projects that are getting real and true usage of this technology. But we need to remember that there is a lot of work in front of us. There are a lot of obstacles that we need to overcome. We also want to make augmented reality fully transparent, as a natural augmentation of our perception.

Transparency

Imagine situation where group of people is walking with a smartphone in front of their face. Moving around looking everywhere using camera in phone and screen of the phone. It doesn't sound convenient. Now let us take same group of people and change their smartphones to glasses on their faces. Normal glasses that look same like the ones on my nose. Suddenly the whole situations looks much more natural, you don't look on those people like on some weirdos. That is why transparency and comfort of usage are so important for the future of augmented reality.

We all know that this technology is nothing new, it is with us for quite some time now. But to be honest I think, that we still didn't find the proper and fully accepted way of using augmented reality. Firstly because it is still evolving. With that, new ideas are born and old concepts keep changing. It is good in wider perspective but for us here and now, not so much. Secondly we`re not sure how to treat it in every day life. Let me remind me the legal problems with Google Glass, when everyone was afraid that will be recorded by someone with out his knowledge and this was only tip of the iceberg. 

Industry - thank you !

Industry and business have a special place in my heart. Why ? Because all the problems that I've mentioned has no place there. This is a very good place for augmented reality evolution, a place where all legal problems are pushed aside. It is much easier to find a good usage for it and work on future device. You can find a quick example here. As always in this context, the main goal is to make people more productive. Is it bad ? No, because thanks to augmented reality the whole work can be easier and the effect can be better.  

This sector has a very interesting feature. People try to use things that were intended to do A, to make B. In most cases it is a major failure but from time to time something great is happening. Sometimes they are trying to gather some small existing blocks and build from them something bigger, you can call it a technological Lego :) It is a perfect environment for augmented reality (for virtual reality also !) for its evolution, for creating a new paths. Of course there will be more failures than successes but lets be honest, this is how great ideas are born. Under fire of criticism, but especially under fire of real and true usage.

I never was a fan of theoretical software that was created just because someone could if it had no meaningful usage. For me, we should always try to build something that has a purpose and we should check if we`re able to achieve our goal. Maybe it is impossible, maybe we need to change our methods, but we always should have a goal. I'm not sure abut the idea and concept of VW, I'm not sure that it will work, maybe it is just another experiment that will be forgotten in some time. But it still have a very good impact on augmented reality. If it will fail than we will know that we need to change something if we want to achieve similar goal, or we should change something in the result that we want to achieve. If it will work than we will know that we can make it better. Thanks to industry augmented reality can evolve and in some time come to us in much more transparent and usable way.

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Augmented reality in business

Business, nothing new. We are all connected with this word in some way. What can change in future ? What we can get from implementing augmented reality in business ? Is this only a new fancy "gadget" or maybe it will give something valuable that allow to improve sale and/or product itself ?

Augmented reality = new possibilities

Augmented reality can offer a lot more than only couple of cool visual effect on screen of your smartphone. Why I'm talking about smartphone ? Because - at least for now - augmented reality possibilities will be limited to mobile devices in business (don't worry there will be a exception). Glass type project are still in minority, they need still a lot of work before we see them in on our faces. But that isn't a problem. You can already see people in stores taking pictures of floor panels to rethink everything in home. But what to do to make it better ?

So what new possibilities we can get from augmented reality ? Lets talk about couple of them.

Furniture shops

Did you ever tried to furnish a room ? Do you know how many questions you need to answer if you want to do it properly ? Do you know how many doubts you have when you want to pick something ? How it will look like when I put it near this closet ?

Project like this are the answer:

This is a great usage of augmented reality with mapping over a known picture. You can simply put magazine when you want to put new furniture and check how it will look like. Very handy and useful.

Important thing is that you need an object to map the virtual element. It allows you to move around it and check from different sides. It allows to scale to product so you can really act like you have a new sofa in the room. Putting only images on the screen is a really bad idea and gives to user a poor effect. Example below (don't do it like this ! ):

Augmented reality + factories = improvements

Ok, now lets go to different part of augmented reality. Goggles. What are the problems related with jobs related with manual work in - for example - factory that produces cars ? Two most common are:

    1. Human errors during assemble

    2. Cost related with learning new worker

Both of them can be fixed or at least reduced using augmented reality. Imagine a worker with special goggles that analyze parts in front of the worker and shows what should go where and how it should be connected/assembled. It will strongly reduce count of errors made by human. It will help to increase quality of the product with out increasing the cost of the work. This is the path which business should follow.

Now the second case. If the new worker will also have same glasses, it will allow to reduce time needed from a senior worker. It will increase his time in the job that he should do. And again, with out increasing the costs we increase performance.

There is a lot of augmented reality project related with business and big data. One of my favorite is Daqri. Helmet that their building is a fantastic usage of augmented reality, it has endless potential and possibilities.

Not only Daqri, we also have interesting project from VW:

Marketing

Ok now something easy. How to interest a potential client with our product ? We need to do something cool ! Something that will make him to pay attention on the product. Augmented reality is a fantastic tool for that. Look at this Coca-Cola campaign:



So easy, and so great effect. Augmented reality is a powerful tool that refers to a very important feeling...fun. Lets be honest, we all want to have fun, we all want to spend a good time. If you give a tool that will give fun to client and allow you to focus him on the product, than you`re a winner. If you want to do that think about augmented reality. 



This even don't have to be a strict commercial related with your product, if you can softly mark your brand there, than it is very often more than enough. Look on the possibilities of augmented reality in marketing. I shown only two examples but marketing business has done homework. Usage of this technology is more and more often. And why it is so big success ? Because for common people this is still technology about witch they don't know a lot



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