Topic > Augmented Reality Essay - 841

Becker defined augmented reality as follows: “Augmented reality is a technology, a field of research, a vision of future computing, an emerging commercial industry, and a new means of creative expression”. (Becker, 2010)"Augmented reality has the ability to give the user a sense of the real world by interacting with virtual and physical objects." (Azuma, 1997). Augmented Reality has been used in numerous fields such as the military, advertising, commercial, gaming and so on. It is still continuing to grow at an emerging pace. Heads-Up Displays (HUD) are now used in many aircraft to display information on the screen without causing distraction or taking the driver's attention away from the road. It was in the 1950s that the Royal AircraftEstablishment at Farnborough began the development of Heads-Up displays for military flights. (Quarrington, 1966) The battlefield augmented reality system also known as BARS, developed by Julier et al., provided soldiers on the battlefield with a clear view of situational awareness. This system was created to help with the various difficulties soldiers face on site, such as lack of visibility, ineffective communications, identifying friend or foe, and so on (Julier et al., 2000). But the developers of this system faced a number of challenges such as: • “X-ray vision/depth perception: When the AR system was being built, one of its main goals was to allow users to view objects that had been obstructed by real world objects. This was achieved by showing the location of the obstructed object. However, such a system presented its problems. First of all, the alignment of the virtual object... in the center of the paper... humans have a lot of confidence when talking about augmented reality and its future applications. When it comes to augmented reality on portable devices such as smartphones, Carmigniani & Furht supports this and believes that “smartphones are extremely portable and popular and with recent advancements feature a combination of powerful CPU, camera, accelerometer, GPS and solid state compass , making them a very promising platform for augmented reality” (Carmigniani & Furht, 2011). Juniper Research concluded that there will be a rapid progression that will be consistent for smartphones that will be able to handle augmented reality applications. Total Immersion, which is one of the inventors of the AR solution, expressed its point of view on this matter and was very positive about augmented reality becoming an integral part of mobile devices (Total Immersion, 2011).