Augmented Reality- the next level of technology

Augmented reality is a technology that blends the information in the form of videos, images or texts into reality. It uses the camera of mobile device to capture real-world location. Though the efforts to interact with virtual world dates back from 1950s, the first functional AR system called Virtual Fixtures, was developed in 1992. With the evolution of smartphones, AR has taken a big leap.

Knowing its vast potential, AR is increasingly being adopted in various sectors like health care, shopping, games, education, business and much more.

Google is also increasing investing in this technology. This is signified with its latest 3D model viewer prototype called Article which uses Augmented Reality to blend 3D objects with real world. On web browsers running on devices that support ARKit or ARCore, tapping an AR button to view the model in augmented reality.
The search giant also announced the incorporation of AR in its products during Google I/O conference 2018. This includes a huge update to its ARCore augmented reality toolkit and feature of Google Maps that uses AR.
• The updated feature on ARCore will help developers build more collaborative augmented reality apps.
• The latest navigation feature of Google Maps will make use of smartphone’s camera to provide real-time turn-by-turn directions. Also they are planning to incorporate a Google Assistant (a virtual fox) to guide us to the destination. This will be done by adopting Augmented Reality via smartphone cameras.
As reported by cnet.com, Google is working on a project codenamed as Google A65 which is expected to be a standalone AR headset.
Augmented reality will play a major role in the way we are going to interact with the web. In future people may switch from smartphones to smart glasses or other AR devices. As augmented reality presents the information required in any space, there is no need for the web to be present within the browser page.

Apart from giants like Apple, Google and Facebook who are encouraging its developers to come up with products that uses AR, small businesses also have started to incorporate this technology to outperform their competitors.

As the trend continues, very soon smartphones will get replaced by smartglasses or other wearable AR objects.