Using Augmented Reality

Once researchers overcome the challenges that face them, augmented reality will likely pervade every corner of our lives. It has the potential to be used in almost every industry, including:

• Maintenance and construction - This will likely be one of the first uses for augmented reality. Markers can be attached to a particular object that a person is working on, and the augmented-reality system can draw graphics on top of it. This is a more simple form of augmented reality, since the system only has to know where the user is in reference to the object that he or she is looking at. It's not necessary to track the person's exact physical location.

• Military - The military has been devising uses for augmented reality for decades. In fact, the Office of Naval Research has sponsored some augmented-reality research. And the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has funded an HMD project to develop a display that can be coupled with a portable information system. The idea here is that an augmented-reality system could provide troops with vital information about their surroundings, such as showing where entrances are on the opposite end of a building, somewhat like X-ray vision. Augmented reality displays could also highlight troop movements, and give soldiers the ability to move to where the enemy can't see them.

• Instant information - Tourists and students could use these systems to learn more about a certain historical event. Imagine walking onto a Civil War battlefield and seeing a re-creation of historical events on a head-mounted, augmented-reality display. It would immerse you in the event, and the view would be panoramic.

• Gaming - How cool would it be to take video games outside? The game could be projected onto the real world around you, and you could, literally, be in it as one of the characters. One Australian researcher has created a prototype game that combines Quake, a popular video game, with augmented reality. He put a model of a university campus into the game's software. Now, when he uses this system, the game surrounds him as he walks across campus.

There are hundreds of potential applications for such a technology, gaming and entertainment being the most obvious ones. Any system that gives people instant information, requiring no research on their part, is bound to be a valuable to anyone in pretty much any field. Augmented-reality systems will instantly recognize what someone is looking at, and retrieve and display the data related to that view.