Imagine how your life would be different if you had timely solutions at your fingertips. Let’s take a traveller’s experience, for instance. Your augmented reality app as your ultimate tour guide – no need for lengthy information search, preliminary bookings or planning your itinerary in advance. Just Go and live in the moment and follow your heart’s appeal. Remember your childhood sensations? The desire of adventure, the excitement of discovery, the magic of make-believe. You travel the streets and the place is no longer alien – it opens up and reveals every hidden nook, tells an enchanting story of every object at which you direct your smartphone’s camera. Sounds like a fairy-tale? Possible. But every artifact and event was once just an idea.
So, everyone’s talking about augmented reality, how important and beneficial it is for your business. The augmented revolution is here and your competitors have already been on it for quite a while. Feels like your business is missing out on something?
Despite the former scepticism about AR technology practical applications and the claim it’s yet another fad destined to be forgotten, what we observe now is gradual increase in its adoption throughout businesses. How can we justify mass adoption of AR apps? It’s attributed to three factors:
· meaningful content
· convincing and realistic interaction of the virtual and physical environment
· unique value that goes beyond what other technologies deliver
The popularity of AR technology is attributed to the fact that humans, as experiential creatures, enjoy novelty. We also love visual interaction. Both these traits are employed in creating an AR-based customer experience. AR can bring positive attention to a product, say researchers. One Researchgate study confirms people not only enjoy positive and interactive experiences, but are also willing to invest in a product that was promoted via this technology.
Augmented reality is just a layer of artificial objects and extra information added to our tech-aided perception of the real world. It does not tear you off the real physical world, but enriches it by adding new layers of data to a smart device. In other words, augmented reality is virtual reality and the real world mixed together. But do not get confused, it is not identical with mixed reality. We formerly explained the difference between AR, VR, and MR. AR’s data is specific and relevant to what you do or where you are at this particular moment.
So how does it work? An AR-enabled device has software that recognizes a symbol, object, or image and adds relevant content so that we can see these layered visualizations as if they were real.
AR apps range widely – from a simple text-notification app to a complicated instruction on surgical procedure. They highlight important aspects, enhance understandings, and provide accessible and timely data.
Its primary goal – to deliver artificial objects into the real world – is realized by transferring projected images onto a pair of goggles, lenses, or camera view.
For example, Inkhunter, is a tattoo app that allows users to see how their future tattoo would look on their bodies. The concept is pretty simple, you draw a square line smiley face on a chosen body part and then position your camera view at the image, the app will replace the smile with a tattoo image.
You may be surprised that while we still consider AR technology a future-transforming innovation, it’s already accrued some legacy. Let’s take a moment to look back.
The first-ever AR technology was created in 1968 by a father of computer graphics Ivan Sutherland. It was an AR head-mounted display system. From then on, AR advanced as wearables and digital displays. It could layout virtual elements on the real-world picture, for example, show geological information about a specific place.
The year 2008 saw commercial use of AR. A German agency developed an app for BMW Mini. To enable it, a customer directed a camera at a printed ad and the car model would come alive on the screen. A user could control the car on the screen and move it around to view at different angles, simply by manipulating the printed image.
The early 2010s brought to the world AR that could interact with movements in the real world in real time. Since then a virtual try-on era has begun. At this point, AR’s instant face recognition revolutionized buying experience forever. Now you can try out anything from virtual making up your face to placing a couch inside your home.
Augmented reality business opportunities are now available in many fields. A lot of companies are now involved in the technological process – from hardware manufacture to actual distribution. Just look at some of the current augmented reality business use cases.
AR has changed the way educational content is produced and delivered. The benefits of augmented reality technology for education cannot be overestimated – it can revive the role of kids’ imagination in learning and development. See a couple of successful implementations below.
Google Sky Map is a free AR app that is used for educational purposes. This app makes learning astronomy interesting and fun. Students point their cameras at the sky and move them around in any direction – and the app will automatically identify constellations and stars.
Elements 4D is an AR educational app that was produced by DAQRI. This is one of my favorites. With this app, students can observe chemistry in action, all they need to do is combine different 3D boxes denoting chemical elements.
As a result, kids find out – the safe way – which elements combine and what happens if they do. The app requires printed-out and assembled square blocks which serve as trigger images for an AR experience. DAQRI’s website has special lesson plans for using Elements 4D with different age groups.
Dating apps, that’s how people find love today. Look at Tinder, it’s popular and most relevant in our society. Technologies crawled into people’s personal life already, and guess what? People love it. So, why don’t we give them what they want and add another technology to this equation? Augmented reality might be something that will make your dating app better than Tinder.
Want to create a dating app that beats Tinder? Check this post: How to Build a Dating App like Tinder… only Better
When it comes to the sports industry, you can really make something useful for the people out there. For example, you can build an augmented reality app that will show a ball trajectory and speed right on the field or it can be a new convenient way for showing statistics.
Augmented reality in healthcare is a very powerful tool. It opens a lot of opportunities for training and performing procedures.
Anatomy 4D is a healthcare AR app by DAQRI.This app can take medical students inside a human body, heart and other organs. Students can explore the skeleton, muscles, and body systems at a higher level of interaction. This immersive experience of student interaction with learning material makes them more engaged and results in more in-depth and profound knowledge acquisition.
Landscaping is another field where augmented reality technology might come in handy. With AR, you can create any landscape virtually and see how it is going to look without the need to actually build something and redo if it doesn’t meet your expectations. Also, it allows making measurements without a tape-measure and can calculate the work cost. That’s an idea for a really useful app.
Tourism is an area where augmented reality can do great. AR can visualize the information on places people want to visit. Maps with augmented reality are what tourists have been waiting for. That kind of guide can provide a great user experience. But it’s not just about maps, museums can tell their visitors more about the objects and even bringing those to life.
Looking to create a travel app? Check our insights: How to Create a Hotel Booking App
With the arrival of augmented reality in e-commerce, sales got yet another tool to influence consumer behavior. AR technology provides customers with the opportunity to try out things they want to buy, so they get more attached to the product. Moreover, e-commerce brands can draw attention to themselves by using this technology.
IKEA catalog is an AR app for retail. It allows you to see how the chosen furniture will look inside your home. You can place it the way you want and see if it fits in. With an app like that, your interior designer skills rocket. How gratifying it is to have a hands-on experience! And how can you deny yourself the pleasure of buying an item that looks so gorgeous in your interior?
Want more insights into AR ideas for small business? Check out the article Can Your Business Benefit from Virtual and Augmented Reality Technologies.
Teleconferences can become much more convenient. Augmented technology helps visualize everything from data to people, and it also lets users see everything from different angles.
With AR, teleconference on any field can become easier. Whether you are showing a prototype of a project or walking around the construction site.
Painting apps are about making walls a different color or coloring an elephant in a children’s book. The pool of possibilities is endless, and what you need to do is just pick a niche and figure out how you can implement AR, so it would be convenient and helpful for your users.
Most of the present-day AR techies are still trying to shake off the intimidating effect of the Pokemon Go app and figure out a winning strategy. However, a London-based startup Blippar has come up with a promising idea of implementing AR in ad banners. They engaged with several automotive brands in launching an AR ad campaign. Tapping on a mobile ad enables a user to observe the inside of a car; by allowing access to the smartphone camera, they can get a real-life windshield and window view of their surroundings. The most amazing thing is that it does not require apps, a simple tap on an ad banner would be enough for the user to engage in augmented reality.
The founders of the startup claim, the concept was born after sharing a joke in a pub about making a picture of the Queen on a £20 note come to life. Since, Blippar has created augmented-reality software behind ad campaigns for big brands including General Mills, Coca-Cola Company and Nestle.
Does the future look bright for marketing peeps? Check the post: Artificial Intelligence in Content Marketing: Can Bots Take over a Marketer’s Job?
AR potential is enormous. It’s just a matter of time and practice before businesses become completely augmented. You might be wondering, what’s the forecast for AR technology. We’ve decided to look into the crystal ball by examining the latest AR startups activity. Here are the trends:
· AR format of content. The technology has proven to be an engaging and popular way to deliver content. For example, Building Conversation is a tool designed to bring augmented reality applications to your business, projects or platforms to facilitate understanding and communication between different groups of people.
· AR takes over mobile. Even though goggles and AR glasses are not going anywhere, AR will focus on mobile. And that is totally logical. People do not adopt new technologies overnight, but smartphones have already become a commodity. For example, Asus partnered with Google to develop first ever smartphone with Tango and Daydream ZenFone AR.
· Industrial IoT. With the fast progress of Internet of Things a new need arised. Massive amount of data is being collected and analyzed. AR can provide users with a simple and interactive interface. For example, a smart tennis racquet, is part of IoT and the only access to its data is through the app. AR can help visualize data from the smart devices with the use of headsets and special glasses.
· 3D printing. Creating 3D models can become way easier with AR technology. For example, 3D Doodler is a pen that creates 3D content in augmented reality space.