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2. Augmented Reality
AUGMENTED REALITY
You possibly haven’t realised it, but you’ve already used an augmented reality (AR) app. Have you downloaded the Pokemon Go mobile app game? It was an augmented reality moment if you saw a Pikachu walking along your neighbourhood through your phone. Similarly, using AR technologies, you might add an animated ‘Sticker’ to a video in Snapchat, such as a wagging dog’s tongue on a friend’s well-posed pout.
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But this is only the beginning. While the screen may never completely disappear, improvements in augmented reality will lead to gadgets that push the screen to the periphery of your vision, transforming displays into digital windows and allowing virtual objects to appear in the real world.
DEMOCRATIZING EXPERTIZE The keyboard, computer monitor, and cubicle are the three mainstays of the modern workplace. We were released from the office by the personal computer, laptop, and fibre internet, but not completely. Augmented reality has the potential to completely transform the way we work, play, and live. Our interaction with both the physical and digital worlds will fundamentally shift with an AR system connected to our helmets and our hands free to engage within both the actual and graphically represented domains at the same time.
Suddenly, an architect can walk into an empty lot and call up digital skyscraper designs and see where they will exist in the actual world, as though towering into the clouds, with the wave of a hand. An international student may have his new overseas textbook magically translated into a language he understands – at least through an augmented reality lens – and a rocket scientist can transfer her latest propulsion system from a desk-sized model to the launchpad without burning a drop of fuel. AR gadgets will also allow people to become generalists for the first time since the hunter-gatherer era.
You would have a highly specialised skill set unique to executing tasks within your chosen career, whether
you're a car mechanic or a sushi chef. A person wearing an augmented reality visor and having access to the correct applications, on the other hand, could give even the pros a run for their money. Sure, turning on a computer won't replace years of practised skills or make you into an instant grease monkey. However, if you could look through an AR lens at a dismantled vehicle engine and be given visual, step-by-step instructions overlaid into the real world as to which piece fits where, you'd suddenly feel much more confident in copying the procedures to accomplish a task without assistance.
The image-recognition capabilities of the HoloLens and its imitators set them apart from other virtual reality headsets. An ambient light sensor and four environment sensing cameras operate in tandem with motion-tracking sensors and an internet connection to track and map your surroundings. You'll be able to go up to AR 'holograms' and 'touch' them once the depth has been determined (and the cameras have kept an eye on your limbs as well). At its most basic level, you'll be able to project your desktop computing apps onto your home's walls on a large scale. However, AR is most thrilling in the real world, when all of your sensors and cameras work together to provide you with real-time information about your surroundings without prompting you.
HoloLens, like the previous chapter’s VR wearables, can be worn on the head and has sensors and an on-board processing unit. It, too, has a display screen in front of your eyes that shows digital visuals. However, unlike VR headsets, which enclose your vision and move you to other worlds, the HoloLens has a transparent screen that overlays the digital software pieces over your real-world surroundings in front of your eyes. This gives the images heft, depth, and presence in the actual world, allowing them to be moved and interacted with.
Everyday tasks benefit from mixed reality as well. Consider driving home from work while wearing augmented reality spectacles. You walk into a store, undecided about dinner, and pick up a packet of mushrooms, which the glasses detect and recommend a few recipes for. The specifications may even direct you through the aisles to assist you find the things you need if the supermarket has been mapped. You dash to the nearest train station, but a combination of GPS sensors and image recognition means that when you glance at the station door, you’re given with information revealing that your route home is experiencing major delays. A voice command asking a means to pass the time results in a trailer for a movie you’ve expressed interest in being displayed in the corner of your peripheral vision – and it’s playing in 10 minutes at a theatre just down the street. Your journey home has taken an unexpected turn, even though that mushroom risotto will have to wait now that the directions have been practically traced at your feet.
Figure 16: Augmented Reality train station broadcast
