The Realities of Augmented Reality

Augmented Reality or AR is a technology whereby computer generated virtual objects are augmented or overlaid on top of the real world. AR is closely related to Virtual Reality (VR) and the main difference is that while AR augments and blends virtual objects onto the live world, VR is interaction with virtual worlds with immersive capabilities. The AR can be considered medium rather than technology as it mediates between humans and computers. AR appeals to human senses as it creates experiences.
The concept of AR has its roots in history of mankind. Humans have always had the desire to change the world around them by drawing pictures, signposts, overlaying objects to create different realities to communicate various type of information.
The advent of the information age resulted in exponential shift of information being digitized, with enormous amount of data to be stored, retrieved and manipulated. Moreover with ever increasing computing power, decrease in cost of hardware, availability of intelligent sensors and proliferation of smartphones paved the way for countless practical AR applications. AR is already utilized in businesses, manufacturing, military, scientific researches, medical and educational fields, to name a few. The potential of AR is huge and there are many opportunities yet to be untapped.
AR applications on mobile devices have taken full advantage of the GPS to develop location-aware applications, camera for image recognition and the device processing power. Mobile devices played a crucial role for AR technologies to reach the general public.

AR utilizes headsets such as head-mounted displays or eyeglasses. Google Glass is the one of the best known eyewear which heavily uses AR to overlay virtual information onto the live world.
Another example is the Microsoft HoloLens, which is head-mounted display. Although not yet a commercial product, its features countless number of features by blending the virtual and real worlds.

The Good

AR has many applications in impacting all business domains and everyday lives:
Education: AR can boost the educational system by superimposing media such as text, video and audio into textbooks. This could enormously transform teaching and education into a new exciting experience.
Medical: AR can immensely facilitate and support surgeons during operations by displaying the vital signs of the patient via AR eyewear.
Military: AR can help the military to simulate war environments especially by UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle).
Navigation: AR can be used as a navigation system in vehicles, transportation, autonomous cars.
Tourism: AR can be extremely useful for travelers, as it could provide real-time information of landmarks, building and sightseeing areas. This could contribute to improvement of the country's economy.

The Bad

Privacy: There is a huge concern of AR privacy issues especially with eyewear and face recognition, anyone could be identified instantly and their privacy invaded.
Ethics: The use of AR is highly depending on the personal ethics and values, which can vary in different societies.
Addiction: AR can form an addiction to the virtual world, which can cause severe impact on the society. One of the greatest threats to the society is the multi-billion dollar pornographic industry, which have utilized and develop AR contents
This could lead to disintegration of societies and its values.
Policies and regulation: AR lacks policies and regulations. Some organizations have set their own policies of banning AR hardware such as the Google Glass.
Health: There are still no conclusive research of the side effects of using AR eyewear or HMD for a long period. Preliminary investigation has shown that it could impact the brain’s cognitive function and cause irreparable damages to the human body.

Why we should embrace AR

AR has diverse applications impacting almost all businesses, people and societies. AR can enhance human lives if properly utilized. Societies could be harnessing and embracing AR technologies following these recommendations:
AR can greatly enhance education and make it interesting to students. Thus universities and schools should include in their plans the use of AR as a tool to teach students
Research centers should adopt more AR technologies, which could facilitate their research such as medicine, science, which could lead to global improvements.
Furthermore AR should be adopted by the medical field experts to improve diagnostics and reduce human errors.

However we need to be cautious

However there are risks ahead with the increased adoption of AR technologies, which need to be mitigated.
The technology companies developing AR should act more ethical by communicating to its buyers that extensive use of AR eyewear could lead to brain damages, this means further medical researches should be conducted.
There should be parental control mechanism which allows parents to limit and restrict AR contents, similar to screen time allowance for smartphones. This could reduce addiction.
AR manufactures should enforce the type of applications which could be deployed. For example, Google should restrict software companies to develop unethical and obscene applications. There should be an enforcing mechanism by the vendors with policies integrated within their system.
Moreover AR manufacturers should restrict facial recognition applications, which could be abused.
Overall there should be comprehensive policies and regulations with AR usage. For example, some features will only be allowed to law enforcement agencies and not to the general public.
The role of the government becomes super important in regulating the AR market and manufacturers, thus government agencies should improve their skills and knowledge of AR.

Conclusion

AR has developed very fast within the last several decades, evolving itself from a science fiction concept to Google Glass. However AR’s importance is directly related to its applications and the achieved goals. For example in medicine it plays an important role in proving vital information to the surgeon. In other fields, like in advertisements, AR plays a less important role when compared to medical surgery.
The application areas that are currently being most widely deployed include advertising, education, entertainment, and art. Other areas are catching up quickly.

The advent of AR technologies brought countless number of enhancement to human life, however as any new technology, it has its dark side. The government agencies and policy makers could not keep up with new technologies, and there is a huge policy backlog of what is in the market and what is regulated. AR manufacturers motivated by market share and profits push their products to the market before there is even a common understanding of the technology and its side effects.

AR is here to stay and it’s not a technology hype. Societies should be definitely should harness the capabilities of AR to enhance the quality of life. However there needs to be better collaboration and cooperation between manufacturers, government and law enforcement agencies. Their goal should not be restricting or banning AR technologies, but rather regulating it and increasing public awareness. On the contrary they should ensure the widespread adoption of AR while making it safe to use.