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LOS
ANGELES — You point your smartphone at an Italian
restaurant, and diner reviews of its lasagna pop up
on-screen.
Or you
aim your tablet computer’s camera down a residential
street, and over images of the houses you see which ones
are for sale — along with the asking price, number of
baths and square footage.
Haven’t
done this yet? You probably will soon.
The
technology is called augmented reality, or AR, and
businesses are racing to incorporate it in as many
consumer applications as they can. It’s essentially
the same technology TV sportscasts use to digitally
paint a first-down line on a football field, adapted and
updated for camera-equipped smartphones and tablet
computers.
“In the
future, you’ll be able to point your device at
anything around you and, without prompting, that device
will recognize what is there, incorporate your
interests, and layer on information about what you’re
looking at,” said Brian Blau, research director at
Gartner Inc. “Point a phone at a building, you’ll
see the history, for example. Or at a flower, the kind
of flower comes up.”
AR has
been around for years, but only recently gained traction
for consumers with the widespread adoption of
smartphones equipped with electronic compasses and GPS
chips to determine where the devices are and what
they’re pointing at.
The
mingling of the real and virtual worlds works by
overlaying what can be seen in plain sight with digital
photos, videos or text. It’s similar to the
sophisticated bar codes known as QRs, but has a much
wider range of applications. A QR requires a digitally
created image, or code, printed on an advertisement or
product.
With AR
technology, a consumer simply points at an object to get
information. Aim at a house, for example, and find out
whether the resident is selling anything on eBay
Classifieds. Or point to an apartment building, and find
out whether there are vacancies and what the landlord
wants for rent.
About 6
million AR apps were downloaded last year, according to
ABI Research — still a small fraction of the overall
app market. But the number is projected to increase to
19 million downloads this year and balloon to nearly a
billion by 2016.
The firm
forecasts the mobile AR industry will see $3 billion in
global revenue by 2016, up from $87 million this year
and $21 million in 2010.
One of
the pioneers in mobile AR was Yelp, the popular site
that features consumer reviews on restaurants and other
businesses. Point a phone using the site’s free app
down a street, and text bubbles pop up on the screen to
identify which establishments have been reviewed.
Click on
a bubble, and the business’ Yelp page appears.
In the
past year, there’s been a boom in companies tinkering
with AR, said Windsor Holden, an analyst at Juniper
Research. “A number of big brands, especially, have
become interested.”
Many of
the apps benefit specific companies (or industries) and
are free to download. Beer-maker Stella Artois has an AR
app to help customers find bars serving its brews.
IPhone users can try out furniture from Ikea and Pier 1
Imports, virtually, by pointing to a spot at home and
adding pieces on the SnapShop Showroom app.
House
hunters can download Emeryville, Calif.-based
ZipRealty’s free app, go to a neighborhood they like
and point their phone down the block. Text bubbles pop
up on-screen, showing the addresses and distances of
homes for sale nearby. Tapping on a bubble will bring up
the list price, thumbnail photo, square footage and the
number of days it’s been on the market. The app has
been downloaded about 350,000 times, ZipRealty said.
Rofo.com,
a San Francisco real estate site, has listed all of its
rental properties on a similar app.
“Someone
can be walking along and hold their phone up to a
particular building or down a city block to see if
anything is available,” said Rofo Chief Executive Alan
Bernier. “Or you could be sitting in the office, point
the phone outside the window and see the same
results.”
Others
have found ways to charge. Conde Nast Digital Britain,
for example, has AR-enhanced guidebook apps for New
York, Rome, Paris and Barcelona, Spain. Priced at $5.99
each, the apps enable tourists to point their phones
toward a section of the city and get a rundown of
museums, shops, restaurants and other attractions in the
vicinity.
The Word
Lens app, at $9.99, enables users to point a smartphone
at a Spanish-language street sign, menu or other text,
and receive an instant English translation. Several
transit apps for sale point to the nearest subway stop
via arrows overlaid into the sky or sidewalk.
AR apps
are also used by nonprofits for educational purposes.
One of
the most innovative uses of mobile AR comes from the
Museum of London, which rolled out its Streetmuseum app
last year. In more than 200 London street locations,
users can view historic photos and paintings.
Overlaid
images include a photo of a building taken as it was
collapsing after a World War II air raid. There’s
also, in front of Buckingham Palace, the arrest of a
suffragette agitating for women’s right to vote in
1914. And in Hyde Park, longhaired students at a music
festival during the 1970s.
Paintings
of the Great Fire of 1666 are also superimposed on
present day scenes.
“We
tried to pick really beautiful, interesting images that
were a bit unexpected from all over London so visitors
could see what the city was like through the ages,”
said museum marketing manager Vicky Lee.
Aside
from smartphones and tablets, AR applications are
finding their way into stores, gaming consoles and
autos.
Lego
worked with Intel to install bright yellow AR kiosks in
its 74 stores worldwide. Shoppers can see 3-D virtual
renderings of what a completed model looks like by
holding and rotating a box in front of the machine.
Last
year, Macy’s tested an AR dressing room at its
flagship store in New York. Instead of trying on
clothes, shoppers stood in front of a digital mirror
that fit clothes — virtually — onto their body.
Gamers on
the portable Nintendo 3DS console can battle
fire-breathing dragons or shoot arrows at targets that
appear to sprout out of any surface using AR.
Automakers
are looking to AR to add safety or navigational data for
drivers. General Motors, for example, is researching
augmented windshields that highlight street signs and
outline the edges of roads during heavy fog or rain.
The next
step, technology companies say, is creating AR apps that
can recognize 3-D objects, such as a building, a chair
or a statue. Eventually, phones and tablets will be
smart enough to differentiate the Golden Gate Bridge
from the Brooklyn Bridge even with the GPS chip switched
off.
Enthusiasts
believe AR eventually could have sweeping influence on
the way people get information about their surroundings
and one another.
“It’s
going to transform areas like online search, mobile
marketing, social networking and retail,” said Mark
Beccue, a senior analyst at ABI. “The possibilities
are huge.”
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