Augmented Reality
Augmented Reality (AR) is a technology that overlays digital content onto the real world, enhancing the user's perception of their environment. Unlike virtual reality, which creates a completely separate digital environment, AR allows users to interact with both the physical world and digital elements simultaneously. This technology is primarily experienced through devices such as headsets, glasses, and smartphones, with future applications potentially including contact lenses and other small wearables.
AR has evolved significantly since its inception in the 1990s, initially gaining traction in gaming and entertainment. However, its potential applications are rapidly expanding into various fields, including education, retail, and navigation, making it a versatile tool for enhancing daily experiences. Major tech companies like Google, Apple, and Microsoft are heavily investing in AR, with products like Google Glass and Microsoft HoloLens showcasing its capabilities.
In recent years, partnerships between tech firms and eyewear brands have led to the development of smart glasses that combine vision correction with AR functionalities, such as audio features and smart home control. As AR technology continues to advance, it promises to change the way people interact with their surroundings, integrating digital information seamlessly into everyday life.
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Subject Terms
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality (AR) refers to any technology that inserts digital interfaces into the real world. For the most part, the technology has included headsets and glasses that people wear to project interfaces onto the physical world, but it can also include cell phones and other devices. In time, AR technology could be used in contact lenses and other small wearable devices.
Overview
Augmented reality is related to, but separate from, virtual reality. Virtual reality attempts to create an entirely different reality that is separate from real life. Augmented reality, however, adds to the real world and does not create a unique world. Users of AR will recognize their surroundings and use the AR technology to enhance what they are experiencing. Both augmented and virtual realities have become better as technology has improved. A number of companies (including large tech companies such as Google and Apple) have made investments in augmented reality in the hopes that it will be a major part of the future of technology and will change the way people interact with technology.
In the past, AR was seen primarily as a technology to enhance entertainment (e.g., gaming, communicating, etc.); however, AR has the potential to revolutionize many aspects of life. For example, AR technology could provide medical students with a model of a human heart. It could also help people locate their cars in parking lots. AR technology has already been used in cell phones to help people locate nearby facilities (e.g., banks and restaurants), and inform people about nearby locations, events, and the people they meet and interact with. AR is used by online retailers to help customers visualize home décor items such as furniture in their rooms. It has also been implemented in smartphone applications like the photo sharing application Snapchat and the mobile game Pokémon Go.
History
The term "augmented reality" was coined in the 1990s, when Boeing's Thomas Caudell and David Mizell developed the first optical see-through head-mounted display (HMD), but the fundamental idea for augmented reality was established in the early days computing. Technology for AR developed in the early twenty-first century, but at that time AR was used mostly for gaming technology.
In the early 2010s, technology made it possible for AR headsets to shrink and for graphics used in AR to improve. Google Glass (2012) was one of the first AR devices geared toward the public that was not meant for gaming. Google Glass, created by the large tech company Google, was designed to give users a digital interface they could interact with in ways that were somewhat similar to the way people interacted with smartphones (e.g., taking pictures, looking up directions, etc.). Although Google Glass was not a success, Google and other companies developing similar products believed that eventually wearable technology would become a normal part of everyday life.
During this time, other companies were also interested in revolutionizing AR technology. Patent information released from the AR company Magic Leap (which also received funding from Google) indicated some of the technology the company was working on. One technology beamed images directly into a wearer's retinas, fooling the brain so it cannot tell the difference between light from the outside world and the light coming from the AR device. The technology, called Magic Leap One, worked to allow the brain to process digital objects the same way it does physical objects.
Microsoft's AR company, HoloLens, created technology that was similar to Magic Leap’s, though the final products had many differences. HoloLens created a headset that blended the physical and digital worlds, allowing wearers to interact with holograms and use voice controls to complete tasks. It also included "spatial sound" so that visual images accompanied by sounds seem to be closer or farther away, corresponding with the visuals. For example, a person could see an animal running toward them on the HoloLens glasses, and they would hear corresponding sounds that got louder as the animal got closer.
Other AR companies, such as Leap Motion, designed AR products to be used with technology people already rely on. This company developed AR technology that worked with computers to change the type of display people used. Leap Motion’s design allowed people to wear a headset to see the computer display in front of them. They could then use their hands to move the parts of the display seemingly through the air in front of them (though people not wearing the headset would not see the images from the display). Other companies also worked on making AR technology more accessible through mobile phones and other devices that people use frequently.
Augmented Reality Today
In the 2020s tech companies partnered with eyeglass brands to develop smart glasses, battery-powered AR or mixed-reality (MR) eyeglasses that not only correct vision, but allow wearers to see digital displays, hear better, listen to audio files, read text messages, take photos, and/or post on social media. By 2024, for example, Amazon had teamed up with Carrera to offer Echo Frames, which allowed users to play music, audiobooks, and check smart home devices via Alexa, a voice assistant. Meta had partnered with Ray-Ban on Meta Ray-Bans, smart glasses that allowed wearers to converse with Meta AI, a digital assistant that uses artificial intelligence. Frame smart glasses, a collaboration between Brilliant Labs and OpenAI, offer wearers visual recognition technology, language translation, and a generative AI assistant, Noa.
In early 2024, Apple released the Apple Vision Pro, the company's first consumer AR headset. According to The Verge editor-in-chief Nilay Patel, Apple touted the headset as the beginning of "spatial computing," the running of apps in the space around headset wearers as they work, play, and go about their daily lives. Reviewers praised the headset's technological advances, but had mixed feelings regarding its functionality and hardware, and critiqued its high price.
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