Point the camera of a tablet computer or phone at a landmark, and watch as information about the building appears on the screen. Bat at bugs on a table to rehabilitate arm and shoulder movement: the bugs actually appear only on a head-mounted display.
Augmented reality programs are rapidly being adopted in a wide variety of sectors, from military and civilian training programs to online product marketing to museum exhibits. The market intelligence firm ABI Research estimates that revenue associated with augmented reality–for handheld devices alone–will have increased from $6 million in 2008 to more than $350 million by 2014.
In the past, military drivers often had to travel to learn to operate complicated, hefty vehicles—such as the armored Stryker or the mine-protected Buffalo—on large immovable simulators. Those massive systems, complete with augmented reality tools, helped drivers feel as if they were moving genuine tank and truck controls and operating the machinery. Today, researchers at the international company SAIC, working at their Orlando office, have reengineered the architecture of the system from the ground up, so that entire virtual systems, complete with the appropriate hardware to create the necessary effects, can be shrunk down to fit into one trailer. These systems can also easily be reconfigured for different vehicles.
“We’ve taken the entire system and made it mobile,” says David Rees, senior vice president. “We’ve already built 13 or 14 trailers for the Army, and they can now take those trailers to wherever the troops are located.”
The vehicles have external arms that can be manipulated to clear explosive devices; the virtual trainer has a system just like it that the drivers can operate, then view the results on its monitors.
Stephen Barker, founder and president of Sarasota-based Digital Frontiers Media, has received national attention for the company’s eye-catching interactive websites. He notes that advances in cameras and computer speeds and smart phones have dramatically enlarged the possibilities for augmented experiences. Barker describes a scenario where “for fashion, you’ll want to know what a particular piece of clothing will look like. So you’ll stand in front of the webcam and interact with the camera, change the clothing that you’re checking out, so you can get a feeling of what it will look like on you.”
At ESPN’s Innovation Lab, in Orlando, Florida, the engineers have developed virtual team members for many different sports. The on-air sportscaster appears to interact with the computer-generated athletes, striding among them as they execute a variety of plays. This system was used during the 2010 World Cup, allowing analysts to break down and explain plays and formations in a virtual environment.
E2I Creative Studio, a lab that bridges the academic and commercial worlds, has brought a new sense of reality to Florida museum exhibits. At the Orlando Science Center, the bones of prehistoric sea creatures were failing to captivate visitors. So researchers at the University of Central Florida’s Media Convergence Lab (the precursor of E2I) created a portal that resembled a science fiction time-travel device. Visitors stepped up to the portal and through it viewed an exhibit that had suddenly been “flooded” with water, bringing the bones to life. Virtual creatures slithered through the water and peered out from behind the real museum’s support pillars.
E2I Creative is now developing a series of exhibits for the Fort Lauderdale Museum of Discovery and Science, including an augmented otter habitat display. Says Eileen Smith, the lab’s director, “We decided to go with stylized virtual creatures, instead of attempting to make them look exactly like the real thing.” The point, she continues, is to offer just enough verisimilitude to let the user’s imagination take over.
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