Interesting Facts about Augmented Reality

We can safely assume that most of you have heard of Augmented Reality and witnessed it, thanks to Pokemon Go. In some of the previous blogs we discussed lot many things about Augmented Reality. What it is, How it works, Challenges, Applications and Applications in Healthcare etc.

Now we are here to tell you about some interesting facts about AR to have an extra update for those hot technology discussions.

Early Bloomer –

It seems to everyone the Augmented Reality or shortened for AR is the very new technology. As a matter of Fact, it isn’t the latest technology. It roots back in 1968, when Ivan Sutherland created the first Head-Mounted Display system at Harvard University.

VR and AR aren’t twins –

Many people still confuse AR and VR and take them as twins. Well, you can be the enlightenment for them, tell them the big difference between the two.

VR gives you a virtual world which is a simulated world which lets you have a completely new experience and sometimes unreal.

AR is a technology which superimposes the virtual objects onto the real environment around you, eventually enhancing the visualization and perception of the reality surrounding you.

Unbelievable Enormous Growth –

Back in 1968, Scientists Ivan Sutherland would have never thought that the world would develop this technology to the whole new level in the 21^st Century. Also, that this industry could generate revenues of more than $100 billion just in the second decade of the 21^st century only through the AR applications. Let remind you there is a lot more to come in this industry in the coming years.

See Also: Applications of Augmented Reality in the Field of Medical Sciences

Good Enough for NASA –

This technology could be a real benefit for NASA, as it can help in augmenting the effectiveness of navigation devices. In 1999, NASA made use of AR for the first time for flying the X-38 by utilizing the special AR dashboard for navigation.

Personal Trainer –

We are sure that you would have never seen the other objective behind the AR Game Pokemon Go and that is to catch the Pokemons you would have to walk around the garden and the town, eventually making you fit.

People are now developing the specialized applications with Health and Fitness for the users being the only objective.

Something to surprise you more, as per the list of Angel a startup database company, around 544 startups are working on Augmented Reality Technology at present. This number is growing every month. We are sure till now you would not have realized that hundreds of companies are getting into the AR realm.

Though Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality started gaining success at the same time and are expected to generate billions of dollars, but Augmented Reality is believed to have extreme potential to become one of the popular technology for the mainstream use.

Well, we cannot deny the potential of Virtual Reality which could be the best for gaming applications as it can give a great immersive experience. But this completely immersive experience could be a downside for its usage in other fields.

There has always been a conception about technology, that to experience every new technology you need to buy a new device. Wels, that is not the case for Augmented Reality. To experience it, we just need our so dear Smartphones. And Pokemon Go developer has incredibly showed us that AR was hiding in plain sight.

But then again for advanced uses we will need to buy some related hardware to improve the experience and the price is worth the experience.

See Also: World Lenses – Snapchat’s Incarnation into Augmented Reality

Some facts from the History of the Technology

• In 1975, world witnessed the first application of AR on TV.
• In 2008, the first AR app for smartphones was launched.
• By 2010, the annual revenue generated by mobile AR apps and services reached above a million dollar.
• 2013 was a milestone year for two reasons one the global revenue reached a half a billion. Secondly, many big companies introduced the AR apps to the consumer market like Tesco, Meta, Volkswagen, and Ikea.

Time for some amazing facts from the Present Time

• Boeing, BMW and Volkswagen is using the AR technology for assembly lines.
• It is believed that the reason for huge success of AR at present is result of addiction of consumers to smartphones and tablets.
• AR technology is seeing a great adoption in the Marketing industry in the previous some years.
• In July 2016, Niantic’s Game Pokemon Go reached a peak of 45 million daily users but sadly it dipped with a good number in the following month and continued dipping.

Let’s look on the future

• Researchers at the University of Washington have set up the plans for an AR contact lens prototype. US military personnel will be the first one to use it.
• Digi-Capital has predicted that AR market could grow to USD $90 billion by 2020. The experts also expect that 50% of that revenue would come from sales of AR hardware and the rest will be generated from retail, enterprise and gaming uses.
• The compound annual growth rate of global augmented reality market between 2013-2018 is 132%.
• It is expected that by 2020, 103 million automobiles will contain AR technology.

An ISACA survey of last year revealed that 73% of Americans knew about the Internet of Things (IoT) and AR market. But to our surprise this figure had fallen from 83% in 2015. It seems that the people are getting confused as the field is continuing to expand.

To end the blog, we would tell you 2 really surprising facts

• Pokemon go was associated with numerous crimes and some people got into very bad troubles because of the game addiction. Niantic was also sued for taking over the private parks through the game. People saw an example of signified risks of merging the digital world with the real one.

Some of the respondents of the ISACA 2016 survey showed their concern that the further enhancements in AR could make the IoT devices susceptible to cyber crimes like data breaches.