The new interactive technology of Augmented Reality adds virtual information to real scenarios and is already applied in fields such as leisure, medicine or education. Writes Javier Pedreira, co-author of the blog Microsiervos.
In one of the first scenes ofTerminator 2, the cyborg played by Arnold Schwarzenegger enters a biker bar in search of clothes, since, for some strange reason never explained, the incredible technology that allows him to travel in time forces him to do it completely naked. Some of the shots of that scene are made from the supposed subjective point of view of the robot and, in them, you can see how information appears superimposed on what this Terminator T-800 sees. This is data that reveals various things to you, such as whether the person you are seeing represents a threat or if they are the right size for your clothes to serve you.
Leaving aside philosophical questions of whether for the cyborg this way of seeing things is typical or not and whether for him it represents his usual perception, these shots give a fairly approximate idea of what the concept of augmented reality (AR) entails: have sometechnology that allows information to be added virtually to existing physical reality, and usually in real time.
Supplementary information without making a move
Without having to resort to films, the truth is that this type of technology has been used for some time in different fields. It is used, for example,in thehead-updisplays of military aircraft, which are transparent display screens on which basic flight data is projected, such as altitude, speed, heading and the position of other aircraft. In this way, the pilot does not need to take his eyes off the outside, as the data appears before him. The most recent models even incorporate this screen in the pilot’s own helmet, so it is no longer even necessary for him to look straight ahead to be permanently informed.
This technology has also been used in commercial aircraft such as theEmbraer 145or theAirbus A380, to cite a couple of examples, and in fact it is beginning to be offered as an extra in certain cars, with the same idea that the driver does not have to take his eyes off the road more than necessary.
Another area where the augmented reality system is applied is that of thehelps maintenance technicians, especially in the aeronautical industry. In this case, the projection of relevant information about the task being carried out reduces the time required to carry it out and, incidentally, avoids operators having to carry complex and heavy manuals. The most sophisticated systems are even capable of superimposing on what the technician is seeing – through recognition software – the necessary information about the element with which he is working.
Augmented reality has also found a nichein medicineas it can be applied in many situations, for example, tooverlaying data from diagnostic tests or to visualize the edges of a tumor, which are invisible to the naked eye, onto a clinical report. Even being a bit generous with the application of the term, it is also possible to include as a type of AR some sports television broadcasts, where graphics are added to the images in order to check if there was indeed an offside or if the ball bounced on the court in a tennis match.
The case of these broadcasts is special, because they lose the element of interactivity that includes the definition of augmented reality by Ronald Azuma, an expert in computer science at the Nokia Research Center Hollywood, in California. According to its description -one of the most accepted-,AR has to combine real and virtual elements, be interactive and in real time, and work in 3D.
There are also interestingeducational projects, such as the one developed by the LabHuman Unit, of the I3BH Institute, at the Polytechnic University of Valencia. Its researchers have created notebooks that include cardboard with a code. These are used for a webcam to place on the monitor where the student works a 3D image according to the contents of the lesson he is studying. The image can be rotated, zoomed in and out, viewed from different perspectives and, as confirmed by the teachers involved in the project, the method has served to increase school performance.
Anyway, until recently augmented reality was something quite unknown outside of movies, these fields of application and somewhat specific programs. However, the situation is changing thanks to the landing of this technology on mobile phones and in the print media. Indeed, in 2009 thefirst tests in magazinesWhatEsquire YWallpaper-and in April of this year, inQuest, the VERY Dutch-, where aQR code -Quick Response-, which is like a barcode, but arranged in a square matrix of dots. When this QR is conveniently read by a webcam or a mobile camera, it allows access to additional information.
In the case of the AmericanEsquire, for example, it was necessary to download a free application from their website; once installed, it would launch videos with additional content, videos that, moreover, since the application is capable of knowing what time of day it is running, are not always the same.
But it is not necessary to go abroad to find initiatives of this type. In Spain,the Bidimobile publishing house was ahead of them with its Bidibooks, books published in six languages that, through the use of QR codes, allow the contents of these to be linked with texts, images and videos from Wikipedia, Flickr and YouTube.
A new way of tourism is born
One of the Bidibooks collections are theUrban Visions, which offer an alternative point of view of some of the best-known cities in the world, with which the books in this series could become travel guides that we would consult on-site thanks to the mobile. In line with this, QR codes could be very useful if they were added to a tourist plaque located on the façade of emblematic or unique buildings. We would thus obtain information about the city, its streets and its monuments with our telephone. In fact, this is the alma mater of the Costa da Morte project.
Actually,mobilesThey are learning to see the world and to offer us some cYou provide additional information through your screens. The latest generation are precisely those that are contributing the most to the popularization of AR. These devices use GPS to locate themselves geographically and know where they are looking thanks to the compasses and accelerometers they incorporate. This, together with appropriate programs or applications, allows us to enter the world of augmented reality via mobile.
One of these programs is Layar, a browser available for now for the iPhone 3GS -it is the model that incorporates a compass- and for Android phones. The information that this software can show is very varied and is used, for example, to locate houses for sale or rent, ATMs, pharmacies and even job offers. Another very similar application is Wikitude World Browser, which shows points of interest superimposed on the image that the mobile camera is capturing.
A lower price for Internet access will increase demand
Anyway, and although the technology that allows them to work is already available, the current problem is that this type of program really has information to show. In the case of Layar -which opened its online store in May-, at the beginning it only provided data about certain cities in the Netherlands, which is the application’s country of origin. With Wikitude, the data that is shown to the client is the content that is on the company’s servers. In this sense, the drop in prices of both mobile internet access and smartphones themselves will be nothing but factors that contribute to increasing the demand and acceptance of this type of services. It is at this point where public administrations and companies come into play, or should, to jointly develop and offer attractive and interesting data for users.
Companies could do business by selling access to these layers of information and, in the case of public administrations, it would be the same if they served them for free. Keep in mind that many of them, if not all, handle gigantic databases of all kinds, which have been created with money from public funds.
As technology advances, andIt is likely that we end up wearing glasses or even contact lenses on which information is projected, as if it were a personal head-up displayin the style of the one who assists the Terminator in his mission to kill Sarah Connor. For now, such an extreme falls in the field of science fiction … although each time with more of the first than of the second.
