Augmented Reality (AR) is the evolving technology that paves a way to a different nostalgic perspective of the real world scenario. Technically it sounds like giving additional attributes to the real world objects thus making it look spectacular and engaging. It can be curative fabricated by the latest computer-generated graphics tools thereby establishing itself as a far-fetched and most sought digital royal mace.
Augmented Reality in Bygone Times
>>1960
The Sword of Damocles is the first of AR kind that rolled out by the year 1968. Two scientists Bob Sproull and Ivan Sutherland came up with this idea of attaching a display device to the head that exhibits the elementary stage of computer graphics.
>>1970
Technology expands its spectrum to a factitious actuality lab called Videoplace. It was the brainchild of Myron Krueger evolved by the year 1975. It was an elevated stage of java development company which correlated the human displacement in the visualized digital effects.
>>1980
Succeeding by the year 1980, a device was fabricated with the novel portable computer coined as EyeTap by Steve Mann. Eyetap does the recording of the eye scapes, modify the same by appending the graphical effects and shall, therefore, people can play by moving their head accordingly. In the exact decade by the year 1987, the scientists Robert Morris and Douglas George streamlined and formulated the AR with the particular type of prototype referred to a Heads-Up Display (HUD). It is fantastically designed to display the minute information on the astronomical data all around the real skyscape.
>>1990
Boeing company research scientists Thomas Caudell and David Mizell coined the term Augmented Reality by 1990. Correspondingly, Louis Rosenberg from the United States Air Force department innovated the AR arrangement termed as “Virtual Fixtures” by the year 1992. Then rolled out a new navigation software by the year 1999, an assembly of experts managed by Frank Delgado and Mike Abernathy, curatively experimented to generate data about streets and runways from a video clip of the helicopter.
>>2000
The Japanese AR specialist Hirokazu Kato created and proclaimed “ARToolKit” which is a freeware Software Development Kit by the year 2000. Then it was modified and made to run by Adobe Systems. Trimble Navigation sponsored an open-air unrestricted device installed in the helmet in 2004. Wikitude executed the “AR-Travel-Guide” application for Android-based portable gadgets in 2008.
>>2010
Tech Might Google unveiled Google Glass, a beta version, which is experimented among internet link through Bluetooth by 2013. Then comes the Software Giant Microsoft proffered the all-new fancy technologies such as “Windows-Holographic” and “Hololens” which is an AR goggles with sensors to demonstrate HD holograms by the year 2013. Subsequently, after three years there was a burst of AR’s fiery feast with the launch of the viral Pokemon Go entertainment for portable gadgets by Niantic in the year 2016. It sprang up the entertainment business with its significant features and showed up $2 million profit in just one week of its launch.
Types of Augmented Reality
- Marker-Less AR: This of location-based or position-based augmented reality, which employs a GPS, a compass, a gyroscope, and an accelerometer to render facts based on user’s location.
- Marker-Based AR: This of image recognition kind of AR which uses a marker to calculate the position and orientation to induct digital animations.
- Projection-Based AR: It just projects synthetic light to physical surfaces and makes the facility for the user to interact.
- Superimposition-Based AR: It completely replaces the natural view with an augmented, as a whole or part. Object recognition performs a pivotal role.
Working of Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality is a stupendous technology which enhances the perspective of the user’s sight. AR can be protruded on the devices like monitor screen, media glasses, handheld gadgets, smartphones, head-mounted layouts. It comprises technologies like “simultaneous localization and mapping” (SLAM), depth tracking, the important component used to gauge the distance to a particular object through a sensor data, and the subsequent hardware tools and equipment to process the optic data:
- Cameras as Sensors. Cameras help in assimilating the things around, that finds natural targets and produces its replicated 3D prototypes. Specific function cameras are deployed here, similar to that of “Microsoft Hololens”.
- Data Processors. By default, the corresponding processor style consists of a CPU, flash memory, a GPU, Bluetooth/Wi-Fi, RAM, GPS, and other electronics segments which are very capable in estimating the speed, an angle of perception, orientation in the scape, direction, magnitude and other multilateral elements.
- Projectors. Every AR device comprises of a diminutive projector display on AR based headsets, which receives input data of sensors and proclaimed the output over an external display.
- Reflectors. In-built mirrors in some not all of the AR devices that specially designed to serve individual eyes to observe the implicit images. The concept of “array-of-small-curved-mirrors” and “double-sided-mirror” are deployed specifically to reflect light back and forth to a camera and an individual’s eye to achieve prudish image alignment.
Thus AR can be incorporated in any smart devices and in any industry kind from healthcare to education to reap its outstanding and spectacular benefits.