As time went by, the movie “The Matrix” is becoming less like fiction and more like reality. Mostly it’s because hardware engineers and software developers continue to refine their Augmented Reality (AR) technologies, making the line between real and virtual life ever blurrier. Not to be confused with the same reality-questioning technology that is Virtual Reality (VR), AR is another different thing.
To understand the difference between VR and AR, first, we have to understand what it is.
What is Augmented Reality?
Augmented reality overlays or overlaps computer-generated information in the real world at real-time. With just a smartphone, a tablet, a headset or smart glasses, augmented reality can analyze an incoming video stream, downloads extensive information about the scene and overlays it with relevant and informative data, images or animations, mostly in impressive 3-D.
In short, AR combines real and computer-based scenes and images to deliver a unified but enhanced view of the world whereas VR immerses you in a fictional, isolated universe.
A quite recent example of an AR application that takes the world by storm is the very popular mobile phone Pokémon GO in which you can capture a digital monster with a real-life background by implementing the camera your phone
Another amazing example is Google Translate
Google Translate has become a practical text and audio translation tool, and it is getting even better with its real-time translation feature. The only thing you have to do is to hold the camera of your smartphone and focus it to the text, then it will automatically translate it to your language preference in real-time.
These amazing inventions that keep popping to our world every day lead us to our next question:
How does Augmented Reality work?
First of all, we need to understand a thing that is called “Computer Vision”.
Computer vision is an interdisciplinary scientific field that deals with how computers can be made to gain a high-level understanding from digital images or videos. From the perspective of engineering, it seeks to automate tasks that the human visual system can do (Wikipedia).
AR use this Computer Vision to show digital content relevant to what the user and the camera is looking at. Then, this digital content is displayed in a realistic way, so that it looks like it’s a part of the real world – this is what you call “Rendering”. Let’s take an example to make this clearer.
Imagine playing an augmented reality board game using a real cereal box as the physical support.
First, computer vision processes the raw image from the camera and recognizes the cereal box. This triggers the game. The rendering module augments the original frame with the AR game making sure it precisely overlaps with the cereal box. For this, it uses the 3D position and orientation of the box determined by computer vision. Since augmented reality is live, all the above has to happen every time a new frame comes from the camera. Although this is just for an example, computer vision methods that work for a cereal box are quite different from those used for a face-based AR.
AR is a very active field, and in the future, we expect to see many exciting new developments. As computer vision gets better at understanding the world around us, AR experiences will become more immersive and exciting. Moreover, augmented reality today lives mostly on smartphones, but it can happen on any device with a camera – enhancing the way we live, work, shop, and play.
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Source:
https://monsterar.net/2018/08/20/15-aplikasi-ar-terbaik-gratis/
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/augmented-reality-everywhere/
https://www.techopedia.com/definition/4776/augmented-reality-ar
https://www.livescience.com/34843-augmented-reality.html
https://www.popsci.com/hyper-reality-film-augmented-reality-takes-over/