Augmented Reality: Getting Beyond the Hype

This meshing of digital information with real-world images is all set to take off. But a few hurdles remain

By William Hurley

As we look back on the year's technology milestones, 2009 may go down as the year of the rise of augmented reality. As recently as January, this meshing of digital information with real-world images sparked little interest even in the geekiest of circles. But more recently it has made appearances in everything from Topps baseball cards and Honey Nut Cheerios cereal boxes to John Mayer's Heartbreak Warfare music video and Michael Bay's DVD release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Augmented reality is near the beginning of a meteoric rise—and it has the potential to affect every aspect of how we interact with technology.

Yet augmented reality will have to overcome some major challenges if it is indeed to become, well, a reality. Hype around new technologies is nothing new, but the hype around augmented reality is off the charts. A quick look at Google Trends provides an excellent illustration of this. Searches for the term augmented reality have been static or even declined in recent years, only to spike since the beginning of the year, especially in recent months.

Recent interest is being driven by the convergence of handheld smartphones, faster cellular networks, and cloud computing. Bruce Sterling calls augmented reality "a techno visionary dream come true." However, much of the hullabaloo surrounding augmented reality paints an unrealistic picture of this blossoming industry.

Twitter While You Walk

Many of the applications showing up in Apple's (AAPL) iTunes music store claim to feature "augmented reality," and if you push or pull at the accepted definition of the term, they just might be. But is an application that lets you Twitter safely while you walk, by replacing the normal background screen with the camera's view of what's in front of you, really augmented reality? Or should the term "augmented reality" be reserved for applications that truly mix digital assets with the real world?

The industry could battle the hype and mislabeling by establishing standards the rest of us can understand. Otherwise, augmented reality will quickly meet the same fate as "green" products: Marketers will advertise even the slightest of augments as "augmented reality," leaving consumers confused and bewildered. Consumers and purveyors of augmented reality devices and applications might benefit from input from an organization such as Underwriters Laboratories, which tests products for safety and compliance with standards.

Another challenge facing augmented reality applications is determining the location of the user. Specifically, apps need to do a better job knowing where I am, and where I'm going.

The where-I-am part of the problem is painfully obvious to almost every smartphone user. Since most augmented reality applications run on devices like the iPhone or Android-powered handsets, they are limited to the GPS capabilities of those devices. More often than not, the accuracy of these devices is less than stellar. Confirmation that you are within 50-100 yards of your actual location might be good enough for today, but future applications will require much more precise GPS data.

Software Gap

The "where I'm going" part of the equation needs as much work, if not more—and the responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of software developers. Personally, I've found many of the currently available augmented reality applications to be somewhat disappointing. Sitting at a downtown Austin (Tex.) coffee shop, I used one to look up surrounding points of interest from Wikipedia. As I moved the device around the room I was presented with graphics floating in space listing out all details on various points of interest around me.

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