The Future of Augmented Reality (AR)
Augmented Reality is a fast growing technology that allows a blending of the digital and physical worlds, with many exciting implications for the business world.
Often confused with Virtual Reality (VR), the key difference is that VR involves simulating an entirely virtual world which requires the user to be isolated from their surroundings for immersion, while AR involves blending interactive digital content into the real world.
One of the main advantages to this approach is how much more accessible AR is than VR which requires hundreds of dollars of bulky and expensive equipment and a lengthy setup process. Augmented Reality on the other hand doesn't require any setup or prior knowledge of the technology and is available to anyone with an iPhone going back to the 6s released in 2015.
The ubiquity of smartphone cameras has brought about a huge change in consumer behavior. Users are increasingly engaging with the physical world through a digital lens, spending a large portion of their time with their smartphone and camera, sharing images and video with their friends and family.
AR fits comfortably into this paradigm. Users are already comfortable with the likes of Snapchat filters and Pokemon go. The technology is maturing quickly; these days most major industries -from healthcare to manufacturing– are seeing the potential of AR to create business solutions that would have been unthinkable only a few years ago.
Apple Vs Google
Arguably the leading augmented reality platform is Apple's ARKit, first introduced at their Worldwide Developers Conference in 2017, although Google has an AR platform of it's own called ARCore which works similarly and aims to achieve similar things to ARKit.
Yet despite Android globally having a market share of 84.8% (although iOS has over 50% of the market in the US, as of 2020) developers show a noticeable preference for ARKit. Searching GitHub for code using ARCore displays 1,807 results compared to 4,367 for ARKit. The reason for this is partly that Google’s ARCore can be slower and isn't quite as fully featured, but mainly it's down to one thing: fragmentation.
A huge portion of the billions of Android users are purchasing low-end devices that have significantly different capabilities than flagship phones. Numerous different companies are responsible for manufacturing Android devices and each of them can select different hardware to support their device's features.
By comparison Apple alone designs iOS devices and as such they all have the same sensor hardware going back years, making ARKit compatible with all devices running iOS 11.0, released since September 2015.
Meanwhile ARCore supports only a limited subset of Android devices running Android 7 or newer and users need to download an ARCore app from Google. Even these requirements are not hard-and-fast: some devices require Android 8.0 and some of these require an additional software patch (in addition to the ARCore App), such as the Sony Xperia XZ2.
The end result is that Apple’s ARKit has 950 million active users while Google’s ARCore only supports 122 million, a small fraction of Android’s total number of active devices. So while Android has potential it looks very likely that Apple will continue to maintain it's substantial lead in mobile AR with an install base of hundreds of millions of devices.
With their long-planned AR headset rumored to be launching in 2021, it's not hard to see why Apple are so invested in the technology. Apple is building a catalog of AR apps that will translate easily to this new form factor that many are expecting will be the next big thing after the iPhone.
Growing Market
Though economic turmoil has caused investment in AR to slow, it is still a fast growing sector and could in the short term bounce back stronger with remote working, contactless business, augmented meetings, and virtual socializing all staying relevant.
While the International Data Corporation (IDC) predicted growth in worldwide and European AR / VR spend will decline in 2020 compared to the pre-COVID-19 forecast scenario, they also noted that the long-term outlook remains strongly positive, estimating a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in AR / VR spending of 76.9% worldwide in 2019–2024 to reach $136.9 billion by 2024.
Source: IDC's Worldwide Semiannual Augmented and Virtual Reality Spending Guide 2020, June (V1, 2020)
MarketWatch are a bit more cautious, projecting the AR market to reach $50 billion by 2024.
The market is also disproportionately young. In a pre-Covid report published in April 2018, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) noted that "one specific form of camera marketing, the use of augmented reality (AR), is quickly gaining traction." It observed that AR application consumers “are a particularly attractive segment for advertisers: most are millennials (aged 19 to 34) or Generation Z consumers (aged 18 or younger).
Considering how popular and widely used Snapchat filters are (especially with a younger audience) AR is already mainstream. AR is gaining widespread acceptance worldwide and, as the technology improves year on year, we must consider that its development will only accelerate.
Businesses that learn to master the technology will be well placed for the future. With people spending more time in their homes due to the Covid concerns and social distancing looking like a lasting trend, AR looks set to become more and more relevant for businesses trying to promote their products and services, as well as for internal company use.
Let's take a closer look at ARKit itself.
ARKit
Apple at this year's virtually held Worldwide Developer Conference introduced their upcoming iOS 14 and with it a new version of ARKit (Version 4) which brings exciting new features that make it easier to build immersive and interactive experiences.
Spatial Audio
If your user has AirPods Pro you can now enable spatial audio for a full 3D immersive visual and audial experience. While Apple didn't mention Augmented Reality directly I'd expect to see this fully working with ARKit experiences.
Hand Pose
Hand tracking is a popular idea in many AR mockups, and has been possible within ARKit before, but previous demos have been using proprietary solutions and it has historically been quite difficult to roll your own solution.
Here’s a few examples:
As they did last year for capturing body motion, Apple looks to have created their own highly efficient machine learning model for hand tracking on their hardware. This makes it orders of magnitude easier to implement this type of functionality.
Depth API
Apple's latest iPad Pro announced on March 18, 2020 had the unusual addition of a LiDAR sensor in its camera module.
LiDAR uses lasers to provide depth information (similar to radar) much more accurately than can be acquired with only optical cameras, but this technology has historically been very expensive (LiDAR modules on self-driving cars for example can cost upwards of $50,000) so including it on an iPad and providing support in their Augmented Reality APIs suggested they planned to add this feature to future devices - and they did, they added LiDAR support to the iPhone 12 Pro in October 2020.
This helps make objects behave much more realistically in their surroundings further improving the immersion of AR while opening opportunities to take advantage of LiDAR functionality in new applications.
Location Anchors
Another huge advancement in ARKit that was not mentioned in the main event is Location Anchors. Not only do these anchors allow users to anchor objects at specific locations, but also add a whole new GeoTracking Configuration, which offers a complete Visual Positioning System. This will allow people to make Augmented Reality apps at city scale using Apple’s system.
Why would I want this?
Most of us have been in cities where our GPS is nowhere near as accurate as we need it to be to get where we have to go, but with a Visual Positioning System, your camera can do the rest of the work by searching for feature points such as buildings, streets or other landmarks.
I worked on a project in 2017 doing something very similar called ARCity, and this was the ambition then — I’m excited to see that this tech can now reach millions of developers!
Face Tracking
Face tracking is expanding to devices without FaceID (A12 Bionic chip minimum). This includes the newly released iPhone SE, so users who prefer a fingerprint unlock feature can now use Memoji, and apps which use Apple’s native Face Tracking features.
Together with ARKit's existing capabilities it's easier than ever to build AR experiences. There are many examples of developers putting together impressive demos with just a few day’s work.
Use Cases
So let’s have a look at some examples of the kind of experiences companies are delivering with this technology.
Try Before You Buy Shopping
If your business makes and sells products, your world may be about to change. AR enables a wide audience to experience your product in a way that just wasn't possible before. Your customers can now see and interact with your product in the real world which can leave a more lasting impression, and make it that much easier to close a sale.
Harley-Davidson, for example, have created an app that provides a virtual shopping experience. Customers can view one of their bikes and swap in different body types, seats, lights and other options to customize a bike’s design, and order it from within the app.
IKEA were one of the first companies to leverage AR using ARKit by developing an app that allowed customers to place items of furniture (or whole sets) in their living space in accurate real-life scale, allowing them to see how furniture will actually look before ordering and skip the frustration of purchasing something only to find it doesn't fit (after having already assembled it), avoiding the need to return it. The app also boosts engagement by including a "For You" feed that recommends new pieces to immediately order. Customers can even scan furniture they see and get similar IKEA pieces recommended to them.
This kind of tech becomes even more important to online-only retailers. Currently the only options available to merchants to showcase products are photo and video, but you could use AR technology to create a virtual shop that replicates the experience of shopping in a brick and mortar store right from the customer's living room. As already mentioned, giving customers the ability to try an item before buying it improves satisfaction and reduces costly returns. This could be especially useful for online fashion where one of the biggest costs is handling returns on items that didn't fit, or because the customer didn't like it in person. There are now several startups that provide AR technology allowing users to virtually try clothes on and even share a photo of how it looks on them with their friends.
Source: Style.me
Training
AR is gaining traction in Medical training programs particularly, one example is found at the Cleveland Clinic at Case Western Reserve University. Students can now learn anatomy - the intricacies of the human body - in an interactive 3D format utilizing Microsoft's HoloLens AR headset.
There is evidence that training students in an immersive, multi-sensory way is far more effective, increasing a student’s depth of understanding while decreasing the time taken to master subjects.
AR can also be applied in training applications by enabling users to interact with simulated real-life situations; for example, the TouchSurgery app is a health app specializing in surgical simulation. TouchSurgery partnered with the AR company DAQRI, to launch an AR platform that empowers medical students to practice surgery on virtual patients, without needing access to live patients and avoiding the subsequent high cost of failure.
Practice by doing is one of the most effective methods of learning, helping to move learned information from short-term to long-term memory more effectively. Augmented Reality can help make classes more interactive and practical instead of focused purely on theory.
Source: Emerging EdTech.com
Warehouse Management
Warehouse management and logistics was one of the earliest enterprise use cases for AR. Many warehouses still use obsolete paper-based systems. Others have upgraded to radio frequency-based systems where information about orders is stored on a central server and workers can scan RFID labels to send updates. The main drawback to this approach is the expense of RFID labels.
Augmented reality has advantages over both of these approaches.
AR headsets such as the Vuzix M300 are both lightweight and affordable, allowing hands-free access to all data in the system.
One of the main ways warehousing systems fail is through labelling errors. Augmented Reality systems can reduce these kinds of errors and save worker time.
DHL has already implemented smart AR glasses in some of its warehouses, which can show workers which items need shipping and the shortest route to locate any given item. Eliminating overhead by giving workers more efficient ways to go about their job is one of the best ROI use cases for AR today.
Source: DHL
Repair and Maintenance
One of the biggest industrial use cases of AR is for repairing and maintaining equipment. Whether it's an air conditioner, car motor, or MRI machine, more repair and maintenance staff are beginning to use AR headsets allowing important labels and diagrams to be superimposed directly onto their field of view, leaving their hands free as they do their work.
This can be particularly useful for technicians deployed on-site. Today technicians can arrive with diagrams and a view of whatever they're repairing and get mission critical equipment up and running quickly. In this way even inexperienced people can identify problems and perform repairs based on step by step instructions delivered by AR technology.
Use of AR in the field overall can improve safety, reduce errors and help engineers who can't memorize every technology and infrastructure perform more efficiently.
Source: iStock.com
To wrap up, Augmented Reality (AR) has progressed way beyond the demo stage and is set to transform the future of mobile apps across nearly all sectors and industries. If you’re thinking of an application that can leverage AR, please get in touch. We’d love to chat with you about it.
