Augmented Reality takes real-time information in the form of video, images, audio, and text, and, through the use of markers, object recognition, or geotags (geographically located GPS tags), allows users to access the information on demand. By designing augmented reality “assets,” Imagined Communities’ teams can insert what’s important to them and their communities into augmented form and re-design the environment. Whether it’s local information, such as the hours of a health clinic or specials at the corner market, culture, such as performance pieces of local artists, history, through the overlay of historical photos, or forward-looking, such as plans for renovation and rebuilding–It’s a meeting of the virtual and the real, where authoring and designing information bring tangible outcomes.
Augmented Reality isn’t new. The yellow first down marker in broadcast football games is among the better known uses of adding visual value to broadcast pictures. Combining an assortment of technologies enables us to see and manipulate the world in whole new ways. Like time travel, we can link the past to the present, and plan for the future using augmented reality. Recent applications have taken combination of application, such as Google Street View Maps, Flickr pictures of buildings,3D renderings of a geographic sites, and GPS linking, to allow people to travel virtually, walk down streets and inside buildings.
Aiming an Internet-linked camera-equipped smart phone or computer at an augmented reality object will trigger the linked files. It will not be long before smart phone users can receive an enhanced information of almost anything within their view, from historical references to the type of beer served at the corner bar.
The applications are endless. Aim the smart phone at a street corner and see an overlay of the restaurants in the area including a superimposed star rating as to their quality. Or scan the neighborhood for all the competing locations. Scan a historic building and travel back in time to visit its history and see its architectural changes from past to present. Floating signs can direct you to the nearest transit location complete with schedule. Or, take a personalized walking tour through a neighborhood.
