Augmented Reality Our future environment

Jamil Khan
S13005065
Department of Computing, Faculty of Institute for Arts, Science and Technology,
Wrexham Glyndwr University
Abstract:

The emerging technology is innovatively shaping the world. Companies are trying to suit the technological
advancement in the business to visualise a different perspective among the consumers. To attract the customers,
they are using different tech gadget. As of now, augmented reality is one of the most significant tech gadgets
which is emerging drastically nowadays. At present, this technology is yet in the beginning stage of
development. Gradually, it is becoming more popular due to being movable and available on smart devices.
Augmented reality is presenting some of the exciting possibilities which are difficult for others. It makes a
significant impact on our every aspect of life including social, education, retail, and advertisement and so on.
However, this paper is a result of comprehensive research of augmented reality. It describes some of the core
information of AR such as a brief history of augmented reality, the difference between AR and VR, landscape of
AR, future perception, and challenges.

Keyword: Augmented reality: Virtual reality; Impact of AR; future of AR;

I. Introduction layers of sounds and graphics to the existing world.

In the recent years, with a rapid innovation of
technology, some emerging technology has crossed
the human imagination. Affordable hardware and
software reached its proliferation peak. An
investment flood has been flown away in this tech
arena in the past few years. This has all done to
gain the potential benefits from the emerging
technology. The emerging technology radically
changes the way of interaction between human and
the digital information media. Eventually, the
human reality has now become augmented by
pursuing our surrounding. It seems very fancy that
how this new technology shapes up our
imagination. Human imagination is far beyond the
augmented reality and virtual reality. A revolution
is going on in the graphical interface design known
as augmented reality. Now augmented reality gives
people a similar perspective but in a different way.
For instance, doctors use superimposed medical
images while examining the patients. Children
enjoy the LEGO construction with augmented
reality more than doing the same thing in
physically. However, the goal of the augmented
reality is to enhance the physical world with a
digital information system [1].
II. What is the augmented reality?
Augmented reality is the expanding form of our
physical world with digital information layers onto
it. AR does not make any artificial perspective to
substitute the real world, rather than it adds some
AR contributes to present the information visually
which is far beyond to be detected by the people.
There are billions of bits of data moving around our
surroundings on the wireless frequency. People are
completely unaware of it. However, the augmented
reality provides the capability to see that data
visually. It is a combination of different sorts of
technology which interact with each other to
convert that digital information into visual
perception [2].
III. Difference between AR and VR:
Most often people have been carrying the
misconception of Augmented Reality and Virtual
Reality. Though there is one thing in common in
both AR and VR, which is the ability to change our
perception of the real world. However, both of
them are different from each other. Virtual reality
transposes our position. It means it may take us to
somewhere else where we have never been. By
wearing the external goggles, we may transpose
our presence elsewhere.
On the other hand, augmented reality does not
move our presence. Rather than it holds our
existing reality and put something on to it. With the
augmented layers of information, we can see even
more than normal vision.
So, in one sentence we may describe VR as an
artificial and animated scene whereas AR is an
actual but photographic scene [3].

IV. A brief history of AR:
The concept of augmented reality has been coming
up to date in an evolutionary way. In 1962, Morton
Heilig, a cinematographer first developed a
motorcycle simulator which had visual, vibration
and sound effect on that. Then in 1968, Ivan
Sutherland developed the first augmented reality
which had been used as optical illusion through a
head-mounted display [4].
Figure 1: a brief history of AR.
From then on, technologists have been spending
enormous time on developing the dynamic AR
technology. With the rapid evolution of augmented
reality, it has now arrived in today’s modern
technological landscape. Today it becomes an
integral part of our daily chores. The utilising of
augmented reality is being seen everywhere from
educational institute to government office. It is
often seen that companies like Nissan, Toyota, and
BMW are using the AR for their advertising. It
provides the viewer 3D perspective of the car. The
motion picture industry has also grabbed the
opportunity of AR technology.
V. The landscape of augmented reality:
Augmented reality turns our surrounding into a
digital interface by adding virtual objects in real
time. It just overlays new layer of information on
the existing environment and provides dynamic
experiences to the people. It could be realised that
how AR is becoming one of the biggest emerging
technology while we look at the Venture Reality
Fund rising report. Their research has shown that
over 150 companies are extremely focused on AR
technology [5]. They have shown that over $50
million has been invested in AR technology and the
number of companies has been increased by 60
percent over the past few years.
In addition, according to Tomi Ahonen, a mobile
industry analyst has shown that the market of AR
will be massive [6].
It is going to a massive landscape of AR
technology including retail, mapping, games,
cinema, recording, radio, TV, advertising, official
task support, home and industrial utilities, art,
social networking, and education etc.
VI. Future aspects of Augmented reality
The world is moving faster than ever before. We
and our surrounding are transforming into digital
era drastically. Considering a decade ago, today
augmented reality predominantly interrupts us in
our every aspect. It has happened due to massive
publicize. It is now assuming that AR will be the
great frontier of experience within the next
decades. Goldman Sachs anticipated that the
market worth of AR will be almost £60b by 2025.
However, this section emphasis on how the
augmented reality will take us to the future [7].
Education:
Imagine a boring pupil cannot concentrate on his
lesson. What if the teacher let him play a game in
the classroom? Augmented reality provides him
games about the lesson in the classroom. It is going
to open a new door of learning for boring pupils. It
will change the classroom environment. Students
will facilitate practical lesson from a collaborative
augmented environment. Providing animation. 3D
modelling, simulation, it will turn the classroom
into a playground. Students will have a real-life
experience of a particular topic by stimulating
videos or game. Boring pupils will be engaged
more in an augmented learning environment. The
Teacher could clarify the difficult topic in an easy
way by presenting the 3D model of the topic.
Especially the lab sessions will be the cheerful time
for the students. Moreover, gamification of
education at an early stage is vitally significant to
stretch the student’s imagination [8].
Advertising:
Traditional advertising is going to collide within
the next few years. Since the customer
concentration is turning into online rapidly.
According to Nielsen, a media analyst, the
consumer is spending over 10 hours in the online
media [9]. The Companies are grabbing this
opportunity to advertise their product with an
augmented approach. The consumer will be
overwhelmed to see the product information
moving around them. They will see the product
data through their smartphone or AR glasses. The
customer will have the experience to see the only
items according to their prior list by simply
walking down in the aisles of a store. Apart from
that items, everything will be faded. With an
augmented advertisement, the consumer will get
the special offers and other product related
information individually. So, the reality will come
closer than the visible surface.
On the other hand, AR will give the advertiser
more freedom to treat the customer individually.
The shopper’s history will appear on the
advertiser’s screen while they look for the product.
Then, the advertiser could tailor the shopper
exclusively by giving a unique offer [10].
Customer support:
Customer support is another aspects of our life
where we are stuck for ages over the phone call.
What if the augmented reality provides the visual
instruction by simply overlapping the information
to the customer’s camera? It would make the things
easier than ever before. With this process, customer
service will be at our hand at the right moment
without any delay [9].
Retail marketing:
Retail is one of the biggest industry where the
augmented reality is going to bring futuristic
developments. This is the largest platform where
the consumer and manufacturer have an interactive
experience. The augmented reality is going to
blend their relation. It has started that AR mobile
apps provide trialling before buying the products. It
just virtual trial whether it fits them. For instance,
IKEA has begun this technology in 2014. Yet it is
not implemented widely. But within the next
decades, it is going to revolutionise the retail
platform by the AR technology. We are going to
see the empty warehouse soon where the AR glass
and smartphone will be the only way to have the
visual experience of the products. This has arisen a
question that would it require to go out then? The
answer is no. Augmented reality will develop the
invisible retail store everywhere. Though the
sounds like wired. But the augmented reality will
set up the retail store in the public places such as
parks or amusement places. Whenever the
pedestrian enters into the app in the park, they
could see a full grocery shop in front of them. They
could walk by the aisles and pick up the products
into the carts. As soon as they complete the buying
process, the product will be delivered at home.
Yihaodian, the largest online grocer in China has
already started to implement [11].
On the other hand, augmented reality will level the
competitive landscape among the retailers.
Comparatively the small retailers do not have
enough space to expose their collection of
products. But with an augmented reality app, they
will present a huge collection of items. The
customer could buy the stuff according to their own
choice. For instance, they can try different colour
and size of the product as it would provide virtual
trial room and digital mannequins [12].
Urban Exploration:
Augmented reality will open up the exploration
experience. In our closest future, it will remodel
our surrounding by providing an augmented
navigation system. We will just need to hold our
device on a road and AR direction will appear on
the screen. It will provide much realistic view than
normal city map [13].
VII. Impact of augmented reality:
Augmented reality gets into our daily life
unconsciously. It has become now a global
industry. According to a Juniper Research report,
there was $5.8 billion worth of AR in 2017 across
the world [14]. Tech giants IBM, Microsoft, Apple,
Google already tried to get into the race of AR
game. However, now the concerning fact is how
the AR would affect us socially, economically,
technically and ethically?
Social Impact: Technology always makes us
responsible regarding the interaction with people.
Though there is a contradict perception remains in
the debate whether technology makes us social or
unsocial. John Havens has clearly shown in his
article about the social consequence of AR [15]. He
has depicted that how technology plays a
significant role in our relationship. With AR
technology, it is possible to pursue our dream
relationship according to our imagination. We can
overlay our partner’s appearance virtually and have
a discussion with them.
On the other hand, Polonetsky, director of the
Future of privacy forum has given a different
perspective [16]. He showed that the data which is
related to AR technology is already public. For
instance, the app called Girls Around Me shows
girl’s location who are interested in dating whereas
it is not sure if they really interest to date or not. He
added that by wearing AR technology, anyone
could prejudge his neighbour’s financial status in
case of failing data privacy. So these are the
socially awkward situation created by AR
technology.
Economic impact: Augmented reality is the new
addition to the retail and e-commerce business. It
gives the users 3D view of the products before
buying it. Companies such as IKEA, Coca-Cola,
and Nokia are using the augmented app to engage
more users. It plays a significant role in the
economy. For instance, AR-based mobile game app
pokemon is playing the most significant role in the
adoption of AR worldwide. It also has a significant
economic impact on the world economy. The game
has earned a total of $1bn within the first 6 months
of its release. According to SensorTower, this is the
fastest game ever which has broken the previous
record. PWC has reported that by 2020, US will
gain 87.5% of revenue growth from AR and VR
technology. In 2014, over 5 million of VR and AR
headsets have been shipped to abroad [17]. This is
how the digital AR trends shape up the world
economy.
Environmental Impact: At present, climate
change and energy crisis are one of the biggest
challenges across the globe. Scientist, researchers,
world leaders are very much conscious about the
environment of the planet. A lot of research,
campaign, and summit has been done to save the
planet. It is seen that technology has also been
engaged throughout those activities. But Sean
White, a scientist of Columbia University has
visualised a different perspective how the new
emerging technology called augmented reality
mitigates the environmental challenges [18]. He
has created a heat map of the urban area by
detecting CO2 level and highly accurate GPS. He
has also visualised the cause of CO2 emission in
the augmented reality by using the heat map data.
Hence, people could be aware of it.
In addition, recently an augmented reality app
called “After Ice” was launched on Earth day
aiming to create awareness about the environment.
Developer Justin Brice Guariglia used geolocation
and NASA climate data to create the app which
will aware people about the water level in the
2080s [19].
Political impact: Augmented reality is a borderless
technology. It plays a vital role in all aspects of our
life. It adds a new layer to the politics as well. It
contributes civic engagement and changes the
people perceptions. Edward Snowden, A CIA agent
has shown that how augmented reality manipulates
people to change the political view [20]. He said
that using location-based information, augmented
reality will shoe people about historical
information of a street corner, political
demonstration and campaign of that place. It
reminds people the political manifesto what is
supposed to do by the politician. This is the way
people will differentiate the political prospects.
In addition, there was another example where
augmented reality directly played role in the recent
election result of Austin, Texas. In that election,
Lee Leffingwell, a mayor candidate used AR in
their campaign to show voters their advertisement.
It helped him to get voters acceptance by
manipulating them. This is how augmented reality
changes the people’s view of the politics.
VIII. Issues of Augmented Reality:
Security and privacy issues:
Technology always lets people feel fancy and
gracious. It lets them forget to imagine the flaws of
that technology. As the augmented reality overlays
the data in the existing environment, those
overlaying data could be disrupted or distracted.
While conceiving the possible risk connected with
AR, people assumed the user distraction is the most
dangerous risk. Though it is an obvious
consequence of distraction while driving. But
researchers have found a different threat which is
involved in breaching the AR system. That’s why
AR researchers were aware of the possible cyber
risk. In 2014 ACM raised a potential threat. They
have shown that hacker could produce a false speed
limit sign in the AR system to distract the drivers
[21]. As AR system needs access to the different
sorts of sensor data such as audio, video and
location etc, a malicious application provided by a
hacker could breach the users' data easily.
Generally, AR works system works based on the
location and camera. When users install the app on
the phone or computer, it gives a permission to
share the collected data with third parties. As the
users never read through the privacy agreement.
Jason Hong, an associate professor at Carnegie
Mellon University, analysed an AR based game
app called pokemon. He has found that how
pokemon collected the user's data [22]. Literally, to
play the game it needs to access the device location
and its camera. He found that the game can access
the user's storage, contacts, photos as well as the
google account of that device. Not only the
pokemon game, but almost every single AR based
app requires access to location and camera. By
giving them permission could result in dangerous
consequence.
Franziska Roesner, an assistant professor at the
University of Washington also warned about
emerging AR technology [23]. She has addressed
that security and privacy of AR technology need to
be concerned more precisely. It could contribute a
potential danger while security is being breached.
For example, when anyone walks or drives wearing
an AR headset which is functionally enabled for
the different task. Accidentally it appears installing
malicious apps which may disrupt the view of cars
ahead while crossing the road. This could be one of
the most dangerous consequences of the AR
technology. That is why she emphasised that the
security issues need to be considered before it
deploys.
Legal issues: As of now, augmented reality is one
of the most trending tech gadgets across the world.
It is being considered the mainstream technology
now. However, as the company adopts AR into
their business, they need to address the legal issues
during the integration of AR technology into the
business.
Intellectual property using: in most of the cases, it
is often seen that some brands just don’t want to
become an integral part of AR technology. In that
case, users need to be careful to use that brands.
Moreover, it is better to have a decision whether
any third party brands integrate with the AR
technology.
Besides, when AR developers integrated the digital
media such as music, images, logos or trademarks
into AR apps, then they need to ensure that the real
world trademark and copyright act has been applied
into this.
IX. Conclusion:
For a glimpse, augmented reality is the virtual
illusion of object. It just provides a layer of
information onto the existing physical world so that
people can see more than normal vision. It
conceives a competence that has been around for
ages. Though it is in its primary stage, within the
next few years, it is going to offer the endless
possibilities. Notably, the manufacturer is going to
take the enormous advantage of this emerging
technology. They will manipulate the consumer in
their own way. Not only the business aspect, but it
will also have a tremendous impact on our social,
environmental, economic and political. Regardless
of some related issues, it will be widely
implemented across the world. It will reconstruct
human behave. It is now far beyond of imagination
how would the augmented reality shape our future.
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