Augmented reality | How do Augmented Reality work?

 Augmented reality

Augmented reality (AR) is an enhanced version of the real physical world that is achieved through the use of digital visual elements, sound, or other sensory stimuli delivered via technology. It is a growing trend among companies involved in mobile computing and business applications in particular.

AR’s Place in the World of Extended Reality

Augmented reality has science-fiction roots dating to 1901. However, Thomas Caudell described the term as a technology only in 1990 while designing to help Boeing workers visualize intricate aircraft systems. A major advance came in 1992 with Louis Rosenberg’s complex Virtual Fixtures AR system for the US Air Force. AR releases followed in the consumer world, most notably the ARQuake game (2000) and the design tool ARToolkit (2009). The 2010s witnessed a technological explosion—for example, with Microsoft’s HoloLens in 2015—that stretched beyond AR in the classical sense, while AR software itself became increasingly sophisticated, popular and affordable.

How Augmented reality works ?

Before we get started, I actually want to clarify something. Augmented reality can be subdivided in different modalities such as visual, auditory or haptics. We're going to focus on visual-based AR. If someone asked you what augmented reality was, how would you define it in one sentence?  This is how define augmented reality: AR is a digital medium that allows you to overlay virtual content into the physical world in a way that makes it seem like the content is physically there. AR essentially allows us to merge the digital and physical worlds. I bet you're curious to know how this magical technology actually works. It all starts with AR enabled hardware such as a phone or glasses. Most importantly, AR uses a system of cameras and in some devices also time-of-flight 3d depth sensors to see and understand the physical world around you. 

Imagine entering a room you've never ever been in, what do you tend to do? You look around and make sense of your surroundings. Your mind builds a mental model of the space so that you can memorize it and recall it the next time you enter the same space. The processor in your head mapped the environment using images from the dual camera system on your face. Similarly, your phone or glasses also map your surrounding environment and build a model of it using hardware sensors and specialized software, in this case computer vision and machine learning software. Now imagine this room again, when we move around the room we can pretty accurately estimate our location within it. This is possible because we take into account our relative position to important features in the room, such as the walls, the desk and ultra-wide monitor. In AR this is referred to as tracking or localization. The research community has a fun word called SLAM which stands for Simultaneous Localization and Mapping. This is what your phone or glasses do many times a second. They map your environment but also keep track of where you are in relation to it. This is so important to understand. Once mapping and localization are working well for a new environment, an AR experience can begin.

 But how does the placement of AR content actually work? 

When placing AR content, your phone or glasses really place them in the virtual map of the environment. The virtual map, however, is invisible. So that's why it looks like the digital content is placed in the physical world. It is therefore really important that our virtual map is accurate and aligned with its physical counterpart. In addition to mapping and localization, your AR device also senses other characteristics of the environment, for example the light intensity and color temperature. To make things appear as realistic as possible, our AR devices sense the conditions of our environment and project that onto our digital content as well. And that is how AR works. It maps your environment and tracks your location within it. By doing that, it allows you to place digital content into the physical world in a way that makes you and those around you believe that it is actually there. I hope that you'resuper stoked to get started with augmented reality. The technology feels magical and AR has a true potential to disrupt every single industry on earth.