After years of gaming being the flagship application for both virtual reality and augmented reality, this year’s Augmented World Expo had a different flavor. Business applications occupied most of the booths, and even companies who were happy to talk about games had a variety of other, more general ideas for how the technology could be used. This is a good sign for the emerging AR/VR industry. With the demise (at least temporarily) of Google Glass, there was reason to be concerned progress had stalled.
The pieces are coming together
A number of technologies are coming together to help drive the potential of practical applications for augmented reality (AR) in particular. First, there is some impressive hardware being developed. Lumus, for example, was demoing a wide-field-of-view reflective waveguide display module that provided me with a natural-feeling, stereo, view of computer-generated characters without obscuring my vision at all.
Tools and services have also come a long way. Wikitude provides a cloud-based Studio that lets even non-technical users create AR experiences. If your device doesn’t have the power to do full object recognition, there are now vendors who will do it for you in the cloud. Eye tracking is also about to get much less expensive. Chinese Kickstarter-funded startup Fove was showing a prototype headset including eye-tracking that will sell for under $1,000 next year — a fraction of what just adding SMI’s eye-tracking to an Oculus costs today.
Platform support is also improving quickly. For project Tango, Google needed to create a custom version of a Nexus tablet with a Movidius video chip and several cameras. Now vendors like Dell and HP are shipping depth-sensing modules as standard issue for some of their devices, and embedded vision solutions from Movidius, Qualcomm (Vuforia), and others will also become more common. Enterprise-solution platforms are also appearing. Augmate is selling a comprehensive solution for provisioning and upgrading large wearable deployments.
Business applications are what will make AR happen
While the gaming world seems stuck in a nearly-perpetual succession of beta products, businesses have begun rolling out AR-based solutions in increasing numbers. The productivity improvements from having an always-on “heads up display” for workers in warehouses, factories, and medical facilities are both easy to grasp and justify the expense of deploying and managing high-end AR glasses. Companies like Daqri were showcasing applications across literally dozens of industries, supported by increasingly powerful and usable tools for corporate developers.
AR solution alternatives: Options for every budget
Roughly speaking, there were three different architectures used by the dozens of AR vendors. The most common used a smartphone or tablet to display the live video from its rear camera overlaid with computer-generated content. This solution has the advantage of being accessible to essentially everyone, at any time and place. Some of the common applications shown included visualizing furniture in your home and getting annotations of buildings or other landmarks around you. The disadvantage is that it forces you to experience your surroundings through a small display.
A somewhat more expensive alternative is AR glasses that incorporate your smartphone to create an AR experience. These designs are evolving rapidly, making good use of modern design tools and 3D printing to bring costs down. I tried out the SeeBright version earlier this year, and for a low-cost add-on it worked reasonably well. I think this option will appeal to hobbyists and casual gamers, much like Google Cardboard has in the VR space, but it is somewhat cumbersome for regular, day-long use. Like Google’s Cardboard and Samsung’s Gear VR, though, it is also performance limited by the processing power in your smartphone.
Top-of-the-line AR gear comes with a higher cost, but is beginning to offer some impressive options. The best-known product in this category is Epson’s Moverio. While it was still quite prevalent on the show floor, including built-in to the vision-improvement solution from VA-ST, there were some other compelling alternatives. In particular, the glasses sold by Lumus offer a remarkably wide field of view and bright, realistic images using its proprietary reflective waveguide technology. This wide field of view is really, really important. One of the let downs for those who demoed Microsoft’s HoloLens first at the initial launch, and then the later model at BUILD, was the apparent reduction in the field of view. Lumus doesn’t sell its glasses directly to users, but they are available through partners including InfinityAR. Controlling an AR experience is still an issue. Small hand controllers are awkward, and eye tracking is still not widely available. One interesting alternative was muscular-based control using the $200 Myo armband shown off by Thalmic Labs.
The future for augmented reality
Power — both processing and electrical — is still a major issue limiting the scope of mobile solutions. High-end systems, like the milspec units on display, still require a tether to a backpack computer. Even Intel’s RealSense device requires a USB 3.0 tether to a computer to achieve its full functionality. However, many companies like ODG are relying on mobile processors like the Qualcomm Snapdragon 805 running Android, coupled with on-board object tracking, to provide true standalone solutions. Over time, expect to see the solutions that require a tethered computer migrate to become truly wearable.
Until someone develops a compelling, immersive “in real life” game for AR — perhaps like the one Magic Leap teased in its promotional video — gaming and entertainment are going to take a back seat to commercial uses for AR. The good news is that the R&D, and subsequent cost reduction of business deployments, will help drive better AR products for consumers once more end-user applications are available.
[Featured image credit: Daqri Smart Helmet]
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Augmented World Expo 2015: AR gets real
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