110 GlobeAsia August 2013

Technology

or those late to the party, Augmented Reality (or AR as it is commonly known) has become quite the buzz-word. A subset of

virtual reality, AR is unique in that it presents the viewer with a composite reality that features a live view of one’s surroundings, enhanced by contextual virtual information generated by a computer.

While so far AR has been used fairly extensively in smartphone apps, wearable AR technology is slowly gaining ground. The most popular example of this is a product many of you may have already heard of: Google Glass.

Many wonder however, whether Google Glass and wearable AR technology in general has what it takes to go the distance and change the way we perceive the universe, or whether it will just end up a great idea that never quite took off.

Critics remain unimpressedMany critics have dismissed the industry flagship product Google Glass as merely a toy and one that is unfinished at best. A recent article in Britian’s Daily Mail referred to it as a “glass half finished” and points out that it will be “years before they’re mainstream.”

These critics however miss the point. Google has a track record for releasing imperfect products as quickly as it can and then improving on them as time goes on.

This approach has some advantages. The first is that it offers consumers a glimpse into a tantalizing

future enabling the company to gauge response before investing a massive amount into a product. It’s a mistake therefore, to judge the prospects of this very fascinating technology based solely on product zero.

There are many great products in the pipeline and things are changing quickly. The very first prototype of Google Glass weighed 8 pounds (3.6 kg). In its current form, Glass weighs less than the average pair of sunglasses.

As the software gets better and the hardware becomes lighter and more advanced, products like Glass will be almost indistinguishable from sunglasses as we know them today. Once we experience that level of transparency and seamlessness between the natural and digital world, it will be hard to imagine a world without it. 

Google Glass and the competitionThe amount of competitors and copy-cat products that have sprung up to

take on Glass is a good indication of the prospects of wearable augmented reality as a whole. Belgium-based Microsoft Imagine Cup finalists Hateya have developed a pair of augmented reality glasses that are designed to help disoriented fire-fighters find their way back out to safety in poor visibility conditions: A product that would’ve seemed gimmicky and not taken seriously had Glass not already garnered so much interest.

Another product, Recon Jet bills itself as an extreme version of Google Glass designed for those who are athletically inclined and constantly on the move. The Recon Jet tweaks the location of the screen, placing it just below the users’ field of view, thus providing athletes with an unobstructed view. This kind of differentiation is also good for the industry because multiple iterations will result in products of this kind reaching some sort of equilibrium when they learn what works best.

Perhaps the most direct competi-tor to Glass, Italy-based Glassup, looks like a cross between 3D glasses and Google’s Glass. So similar is Glassup to Google’s offering that Cnet.com reports the start-up received legal papers from Google in March asking it to stop using the name. Glassup differentiates itself from Glass by projecting relevant infor-mation directly on the glass instead of on a separate display.  Glassup is cur-rently raising money through crowd-funding website Indiegogo.com and is due to be released early next year.

While innovation does get all the headlines, let’s not forget the positive

Wearable Augmented Reality: Redefining our world

August 2013 GlobeAsia 111

By Jason Fernandes

effects that imitative products can have on the market. There are bound to be competitors in any industry and a rising tide lifts all boats. The more similar products in the marketplace the higher the likelihood that augmented reality will become something we interact with on a day-to-day basis.

Increased competition also provides greater choice and better differentiation of price vs. features for consumers. Products such as Recon Jet and Glassup owe an obvious debt to Google Glass but they each clearly target different markets and in most cases are quite a bit cheaper as well. The advantage of this, both for Google and the industry in general, is that it helps the idea gain widespread acceptance and helps manufacturers bridge the rift between early adopters and more mainstream users.

Industry boosts AR investmentsCertainly the plethora of options that have sprung up in such a short time indicates there is a fair amount of interest in this sort of technology. But are developers on board? The answer is yes. According to analysts at ABI Research, developers are set to invest $670 million in augmented technology this year and that number could reach as high as $2.5 billion in five years time. Those are big numbers for an industry in such a nascent stage and how high these numbers could go is really anybody’s guess.

Indications are that developers are buckling in for the long haul. California-based game developers MindPirate recently announced that they have secured $2.5 million to fund their push into augmented reality. Their credo, as stated by CEO Shaw Hardin is “Your world is your game board” and is heavily influenced by the concept of Google Glass and the ability to overlay virtual games onto one’s

actual surroundings.The mere concept of Google Glass

has opened the floodgates of innova-tion (and imitation) with developers and competitors already prepping their products to either work with, or com-pete with Glass. Advertisers are having a field day experimenting with AR.

While focused on smartphones instead of wearable AR, mainstream

companies such as Papa Johns, General Electric, Volkswagen and even the US Postal Service have either deployed or are in the process of deploying AR-based advertisements. Admittedly the vast majority of these have been more of a gimmick but it does lead to greater engagement with the brand, an outcome that many advertisers would view as a victory. 

Augmented Reality steps out The recent Augmented World Expo 2013 in Santa Clara, California in June was viewed by many in the industry as AR’s debutante party. Keynoted by Steve Mann, who many consider the father of wearable computing, the overwhelming sense at the conference was that mighty Google was merely an upstart in this exciting field. Mann even referred to Google Glass at one point in the conference as a “generation one” device.

This is indicative of both the amount of interest in AR as well as a

hint as to what’s to come. According to The Verge’s mobile analyst Tomi Ahonen, AR will reach 1 billion people by 2020, making it the eighth-largest mass medium. Clearly wearable AR is here to stay. 

Wearable AR will forever change the way we interact with and view the world simply because it’s the technology’s role to enhance our lives, and this is merely a natural progression of that concept. While some might argue that it is impossible to definitively say whether or not a particular technology will cross into the mainstream, the fact that advertisers, developers and investors believe in the technology is generally a good clue.

Thus far consumers have been confined to experiencing AR on their smartphone, however as products like Google Glass and Glassup become more mainstream, wearable AR will be much easier to integrate in the world around us and not require special apps to be useful. Indeed scientists are already working on AR-enabled contact lenses, forever blurring the definition of what it means to be human.

As the technology becomes more robust and more transparent, the doors will really be flung open to a world of new products and innovations. Mini-mally obtrusive wearable AR will play a critical role in the next stage of hu-man evolution, enhancing us while still allowing us to maintain our essential humanity.

Science fiction author Philip K. Dick once said “reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” With the advent of persistent AR, we might have to revisit that definition.

 Jason Fernandes is a tech commentator

and the founder of SmartKlock.

Scientists are already working on AR-enabled contact lenses, forever blurring the definition of what it means to be

human.