A bit about Augmented Reality

In the past few months Augmented Reality has started to come more and more into the spotlight.  It really started with the GE wind turbine example that was released almost a year ago but has also spread to the iPhone market with some really cool apps like Bionic Eye.   One thing that always strikes me when I hear people discuss Augmented Reality is that they act like it is something new when in fact it has been around a long time.  Another thing that strikes me is the misconception of what augmented reality is, for example it always involves a web cam and a pattern on a piece of paper.  This is not the case at all.  I plan on doing a few posts about Augmented Reality and how to put it into your flex applications but before I get that far I want to go over some the background of Augmented Reality.

Augmented Reality, simply put, is altering (Augmenting) a live image (Reality) with some kind of digital image. The live image that is being augmented can be direct from a video source or it could be recorded but unedited.  As soon as you begin to edit the video it is no longer classified as live and you are simply just doing post production work on the video.  What you overlay on the video can be anything although it really should be something that is computer generated.  There has been discussion in the AR circles if placing video on top of video is really Augmented Reality or not.  If you are looking to create a true Augmented Reality piece I would stay stick to stuff generated by the computer.  The generated images that are overlaid on the video must be aware of what is going on in the video and react to it.  You can not simply add a 3D cube to the bottom corner of the video display and call it AR, there must be an element of interaction with the feed such as moving when the feed moves.

Example Fiducial Marker

To add interaction with the feed you must pull data either from the feed or the surroundings and alter the imagery accordingly.  The GE example uses a printed marker (Fiducial Marker) and tracks the position of that in the feed and updates the generated turbine based on where that marker is in the screen as well as what angle it is.  The Bionic Eye example uses a combination of the compass feature and the gps feature of the iPhone to track where the user is and then updates the display based on the movements of the phone.  Both these examples monitor the video feed and update their display accordingly thus making them true Augmented Reality applications.

It is surprising how many people claim to have never seen Augmented Reality before.  People only ever expect Augmented Reality to be big flashy applications but often the better applications are the most subtle.  Recently I was having a discussion about Augmented Reality with some college students and I asked them if they had ever seen Augmented Reality in a real world environment, not something that was part of a demo like the GE example, but something that is used or seen by many people.  As expected everyone said that they had not.  I then followed up and asked how many people watched Monday night football, or has seen part of a football game in the past few years.  Not surprisingly everyone said they had.  I was then able to inform them that every single one of them had experiences Augmented Reality.  This brought confused looks but I pointed out the Yellow first down line that is displayed on the screen.  The line itself does not display on the field, only on the tv screen.  If the camera was to move the line would stay in place and if a player were to walk over the line, the line would not be displayed on top of him.  The line being displayed on the screen is Augmented Reality.  The video feed (Reality) is being updated (Augmented) by a computer before it is being broadcast to the viewers. 

People often think of Augmented Reality to be a fun fad with no real world implications but after finding out about the yellow line in football they begin to realize that there are real world uses.  Yes, 8 times out of 10 you will only see examples of patterns and 3D cubes, or maybe patterns with some kind of animation but don’t forget that there is a lot more to the world of Augmented Reality and with the introduction of many mobile phones with video cameras you can expect to see many more new and ingenious applications.

Soon I plan on doing some blog posts about the Augmented Reality library I use and look at how to build applications that use AR.  Hopefully we can start to turn the tide on these simple examples and start to pump out some fun experiments.