AUGMENTED REALITY

Augmented reality is a mix of technologies (software) built into a smartphone or laptop equipped with a webcam that allows you to observe and enrich surroundings with layers of informations, and virtual and multimedia  elements. Creating new models of communication in real time, ranging from advertising to home automation, for different kind of markets: from tourism to consumer.

MOBILE

Augmented Reality is Mobile: through a last generation smartphone equipped with GPS (for positioning), magnetometer (compass) and a screen that allows us to observe the surrounding environment, identifying levels of virtual content that overlay, in real time, different reference points. For example, in services that integrate geolocal based services, as applications installed on smartphones that use the technology of GPS to define people’s location or available proximity services (transport, shop, etc ..)

WEB

Augmented reality is Web: through the use of markers or ARtags (stylized drawings in black and white), and/or through any type of image recognized by the laptop’s webcam, to overlay real-time multimedia content: audio , video, 3D objects, etc.

AUGMENTED REALITY APPLICATIONS

Already used by military research or in academic or medical studies, augmented reality, since 2009, has reached people’s attention through adv campaigns, on newspapers or on the web. The fact that augmented reality applications are normally accessible by standard Internet browsers has boosted the birth and growth of  Augmented Advertising, as a new way (through AR)  for advertising and promotion of the major corporate brands (ex. Esquire magazine popular AR campaign).

Recent devices technology improvement has also greatly influenced the development and deployment of an increasing number of applications for smartphones (Android, iPhone). It is now possible, thanks to AR apps, to find geolocal based informations, to view images from the web as from social networks or to view informations and instructions overlaying reality, to follow tweets, to find your 3d carpark, to play videogames with the city as a whole playground, to report news tagged to specific places in real time.

MAR (Mobile Augmented Reality) formula

By 2016 will be a billion smartphones enabled in augmented reality  (vs 150 million units, actually), with an expected turnover for worldwide applications , which will increase from today’s $ 11 million  to 3.4 billion dollars, on 2016 .