Augmented reality (AR) technology is coming into our homes, our cities and elsewhere in the near future. Dramatic advances in computer technology are making possible a world that once would only have been found in the realm of science fiction... The revolution is impacting everything from mobile phones to digital home electronics, forcing rapid evolution.
In the near future, reality will change into something like science fiction, thanks to augmented reality (AR) technology (Fig 1). AR emerged in the first half of 1990s, and is already extensively featured in film, television programs and the like. For example, a newscaster in the studio can be synthesized into a background image of the great outdoors. In addition to TV, there has also been considerable progress in military technology applications such as night-vision scopes and fighter pilot targeting displays, while practical applications appeared in medicine about two years ago.
In the near future AR will become a key part of our daily lives. As image processing algorithms become more refined and the amount of processing power required drops, the performance of microprocessors and graphics processing unit (GPU) integrated circuits (IC) is soaring. Professor Hirokazu Kato of the Nara Institute of Science & Technology (NAIST) of Japan, known for the public release of the "ARToolkit" C-language library for AR free of charge, points out "Even the iPhone boasts the processing power of a workstation of the 1990s."
The first consumer AR products are expected to appear before the end of 2009, including mobile phones and printed items, for example. Within a few years the trend will spread to home electronics, gathering strength to become an avalanche.
This change, simply, is a total revolution in the shape of home electronics, overturning our existing conceptions.
So what is AR, anyway? Basically, it's a technology that enhances human senses by overlaying computer-processed information, in realtime, on top of real-world information we can see, hear or touch.
The fundamental
difference between AR and the virtual reality (VR) that attracted so
much hype in the 1990s is the ratio between real-world information and
virtual information (Fig 2). While VR attempts to replace all
real-world information with virtual information, such as using computer
graphics (GC) for all visual information, AR instead enhances (or
augments) real-world information with virtual information. The ratio of
virtual information is low.
Some researchers use a different yardstick to define AR. NAIST's Kato says "AR is a technology that is convenient, fun to use and safe for users." In other words, how the technology supports human activity is more important than how virtual information is weighted.
What is needed to actually utilize AR is the AR interface equipment, which consists of the computer, various sensors to serve the computer as vision, touch and other senses, and a display or similar device to output the processed information. Depending on what sensors, output devices, etc, are used, and how processed information is to be overlaid on reality, an enormous range of applications is possible.
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