Imagine you had these really cool sunglasses. Except that instead of just protecting you from the sun, the lenses also told you what you were looking at. You could walk through the city and it would show you not just what street you’re on and the direction you’re headed, just like a GPS, but the names of the buildings you pass by. You might look at someone you recognize, but whose name you don’t remember, and the sunglasses will recognize the face, search your personal contacts and display who that person is and where you know them from.
The idea of being able to look through a lens and see additional layers of information on top of what’s visible to the eye has always been the stuff of cyberpunk novels. It’s called augmented reality. In contrast to virtual reality, where you’re immersed in a world that doesn’t really exist, augmented reality takes the real world — what you would normally see and hear — and superimposes its own.
In recent years the hardware and software needed to bring augmented reality to consumers has become commonplace and AR technology is now being launched on several mobile phones. It uses GPS (or cell site triangulation), and the built in accelerometer to determine the orientation of the camera, and either WiFi or mobile broadband (HSDPA) to receive data about the current location.
There are currently several augmented reality applications already available for Andriod and the iPhone, but probably the most interesting to me is the Layar augmented reality browser. Just as web developers don’t need to worry about developing their own web browser but only need to work on hosting their content on a webserver, Layar allows developers to host their own list of POIs (points of interest) and the application simply acts as an interface.
Here are some videos of the technology in action:
The host walks through the streets of Amsterdam, by looking through the camera of a Samsung Galaxy and finds where Brad Pitt’s been hiding out.
This advertisment for Layar shows real estate listings, jobs, healthcare providers, and bars.
Location-based social network Brightkite lets you see posts left by other Brightkite users, at the location where they were made.
Tagged: android, augmented reality, cool, layar, location based services, mobile, samsung, social network, virtual reality