June 15, 2009
WTF Augmented Reality: Part 1, The Basics
As projects like GE's Smart Grid and SixthSense are proving, "Augmented Reality" is more than science fiction fodder. In fact, it may soon be coming to a store near you! In this two-part series, we explore just what this technology is exactly, and how it will shape the future of mobile technology and consumer behavior.
What Are You Looking At?
Remember in Terminator when you get to see what the Terminator is looking at? A red-colored filter is slapped over the lens and a bunch of text, numbers, names of people, ranges to targets, and other interpretive tools appear in the view. The question is, why does a robot need all that text? He’s certainly not reading it.
However, every human viewer instantly understood that this was the Terminator’s machine perspective on the world. Instead of just seeing things as we do, he made explicit informatics around each object so as to analyze and interpret it. If we look at a pen on our desk, our brain does the same thing. We can tell that this cylinder is about 6 inches long. It's black with a ribbed barrel and a cap. Somewhere in our experience we have seen this basic form before, and we have used it to write letters or take notes. All of those calculations--called object recognition and context regocnition--have to happen in the blink of an eye. Once we identify an object, we can see that object’s pattern repeated around us and instantly identify it.
We see this system in practice every day, but it becomes more evident when we are faced with an object that doesn’t fit our model. Imagine a sphere: It’s glossy red, has a power cord coming out of one side, a seam in the middle, a dimple on one side and vents on the other. Now, imagine you're told this sphere is a toaster. Most people would respond, “I’ve never seen a toaster like that before.” But then it's added to the list of possible toasters in your head. Next time, you can recognize it instantly.
Augmented Reality and Metadata
However, we can look at a pen and still not be able to tell certain things about it no matter how much we stare. With the BIC Click pen, we are unable to see the ink cartridge even though we know it's there. But without disassembly, we cannot know its ink level. There is a way however, it's called augmented reality. Augmented reality systems add metadata (basically informative or a descriptive data) about objects to our existent faculties.
The idea of object metadata is not new - packaging engineers always present object metadata on the box and some designers strive to make explicit details about form, production and function, but the ways it’s used have evolved.
Virtual Information
In the pen example, using a simple sensor network, we could give information about ink level straight to our computer and order new pens when we're about to run out. In the case of augmented reality, the larger significance is that we’ve added a virtual information layer on top of an object. The list doesn’t have to stop at ink, though, we could give entire object histories in the form of virtual metadata. The pen’s "exif file data" might contain information on manufacturing location, materials composition, recycling information, purchase price, usage history, and location.
Augmented reality lets you see an object’s metadata the way Flickr displays tags. A very understandable example actually appears on Flickr here. This Flickr representation as well as the pen example are basic forms of augmented reality.
In our next post on this topic, we’ll tackle more innovative and recent applications of the technology and demonstrate how these technologies can help businesses better market their goods and services seamlessly.
- Vikram Tank
