This Week In Technology: Augmented Reality And 3D Technologies

This week we have chosen to focus on augmented reality technologies which seem to have made major advancements recently, both in terms of capability, mobile development and integration into current mobile devices.

As always, this list is not comprehensive, however if you feel that we missed something major please let us know in the comments section. We try to cover the technologies that are most relevant to the types of software and applications we develop here at Amadeus Consulting, since it is technology that we hope to play with as soon as we can get our developer hands on it.

Retail

Every day smart phones seem to get a little bit smarter, and it seems like every day we get a little bit closer to living in the world of Star Trek, with tricorders and holodecks closer than ever.

Most impressive is the power of mobile apps. We have seen some really cool augmented reality apps that are able to layer in pictures and information based on whatever your camera is looking at. Among these are some test apps that use an IBM product called Presence.

Presence detects shoppers (who voluntarily use the service) as soon as they enter a store. Presence then can track the shopper’s buying habits and monitor how much time each customer spends in different areas of the store. It then uses this data to track the effectiveness of sales as well as offer in-store coupons or other incentives to buy a product.

Similar to Cisco’s Mobile Concierge system, Presence can make product recommendations. IBM Executive Craig W. Stevenson who oversees Presence was quoted by The New York Times as saying “[w]e’re also able to do predictive analytics – predict what we think you might want based on what we already know about you.”

This could include any information you give it, such as clothing sizes or music preferences, or things that are currently in your shopping cart, like a cake mix which requires the purchase of frosting and eggs. Presence can then help guide you to the appropriate area of the store.

Although this seems a bit creepy to some consumers, this information is already stored by most stores that use any type of loyalty card system. Integrating this into a cell phone app (with permission of course) can provide a benefit to both the consumer and the retail industry as information and recommendations become more precise and meaningful.

Being a leader in both mobile development and ecommerce development, Amadeus Consulting is very familiar with augmented reality. Feel free to contact us if you’re interested in having an augmented reality application developed.

Travel

Almost anyone who has ever watched ABC’s television show “The Amazing Race” can tell you that being lost in a foreign country and not being able to speak the local language is an inevitable disaster.

Google has been working on a comprehensive real-time translation system that would basically allow you to have calls instantly translated, or use a mobile app to do the translation and speaking for you. There have been many attempts at this, with varying degrees of success, and so it will be interesting to see how Google’s service ultimately compares.

Amadeus Consulting is currently using this technology to communicate with one of our ecommerce development clients, so it’s tried and true.

Exercise

This is one device that simply cannot be skipped. It is the perfect mix of entertainment, travel, innovation and technology. NordicTrack’s newest treadmill allows pseudo-travelers to download real trails and routes which are then mimicked by the treadmill, by changing the incline to match the trail’s terrain. Also, as you progress through the course, the screen will display snapshots of landmarks and other scenery.

To us, this seems like a very innovative mix of a traditional technology with high tech options, resulting in a win for consumers.

3D and Multi-Touch

We’ve mentioned the Microsoft® Surface™ before (and we even have one now for visitors to play with at our Boulder, CO office), which is basically a multitouch table that displays information, plays games, connects to the Internet, recognizes gestures, and does a number of other things. In short, it’s pretty cool. Surface works by integrating a camera and projection system underneath the display surface, which lets it function like a table.

However, now Microsoft is turning things upside-down by reversing the concept. Instead of having the system function under the table, it is being adapted into an overhead device, which is more portable and can be installed over any surface. Additionally, it is also much more scalable since it can be adapted to work with small or large surfaces.

Presumably (or at least hopefully) this will be an extension of Microsoft’s extremely successful Project Natal which is a visual object and gesture recognition program designed mostly for the XBOX®. Not only would it be a lot of fun for gaming applications, but retail stores and logistics planning could be extremely enhanced by it, in the style of the movie Minority Report.

No word yet on any sort of release date yet, since this is only a proof of concept, but if it ever does come out, we’ll be first in line to port our current Surface apps over to the new technology.

About the Author

About Todd McMurtrey

The marketing team at Amadeus Consulting considers it part of their daily tasks to stay on top of what is going on in the technology marketplace. It is important to our company culture to be technology thought leaders, but we also want to share our knowledge and insights with readers excited about the latest and greatest tech news in the Tech Market Watch blog.

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