The world of Augmented Reality (AR) technology and its collateral usage in Extended Reality (XR) is bringing in a new wave of applications to fields of human knowledge.
Given this extra dimension through which we can parse relevant information, it informs and supports our reality to greater heights. It enables a stable structure for our imagination, helping us take the next step towards real-world progress.
AR applications allow the superimposition of digital information onto our physical environment, through head-sets, smart lenses, and more accessible devices like our tablets and smartphones. Augmented reality will revolutionize your life through the coming years, creating a wealth of uses for itself.
Here are 7 ways AR can change the world:
(1) Immersive Learning
Bring the classroom to your phone. Travel the places written about in your textbooks. Google’s Expeditions app is a popular example of using AR to explore the world to teach students. Users can download and undertake readymade “expeditions” into different parts of the world to interact with their topography, geography, architecture, history, and other AR objects. Creating such awareness at a young age helps in the educational process, and these online AR educational apps can even be used once schools resume, after COVID-19 dissipates.
(2) Environmentalism
Teach your kids and yourself the value of the natural environment. Most of us grow up in such an overpowering environment of industrialism, technocracy, and urbanism, we are unaware of our impact on the natural elements of the Earth. We are not conditioned to appreciate it. Through environmentalist games and apps such as Agents of Discovery, we can explore the surrounding natural environment, and be made aware of conservation efforts. This inculcates respect for natural resources such as water, forests, clean air, etc.
(3) Medicine & Healthcare
No more bad odors when dissecting human bodies! AR and VR technologies are already being applied for the benefit of medical students, doctors, and surgeons. With the advancement in AR and VR technologies in the last decade, the detailing of extended reality has improved to such a degree that human anatomy and tissue models have become comfortably usable for practitioners.
There is no actual need to cut up and inspect human cadavers when you can do the same of digital human anatomies in AR and VR, for educational purposes. HoloGroup’s use of Mixed Reality systems is one such example.
(4) Mental Health
To delve into the mind, frameworks of imagination and interaction are needed. Different psychological perspectives are hard to see for the average layman. Most people do not understand the cycles of systematic abuse that pervades society and human relationships. Through AR applications, perspectives of children and victims in domestic abuse are being made available, so that we can see the damage it does upfront. Initiatives such as Oxford VR are also looking into the broader usage of AR and VR applications to the field of mental health.
(5) Disabled Individuals
An extra dimension for those who have lost one. A significant portion of society is disabled in some aspect or the other. For the entertainment of deaf and aurally impaired individuals, theatres and other cinematic venues use AR and VR devices to add captions and subtitles and/or corresponding sign language to the performances they are seeing on stage/screen. People with ambulatory disabilities could also be able to explore and maneuver their localities, shops, and markets better through AR technology.
(6) Measuring
Measuring tapes are overrated. Trying to find the distance between the bottom of your beam and the ceiling—up where it’s even difficult to get to, by ladder? Or do you need to relook at those kitchen dimensions, for your new refrigerator? The AR Ruler App uses AR technology to help you measure the lengths, heights, and breadths of various spaces in your homes. It makes the process fast and easy—and the technology is very accurate. Especially useful in a professional aspect for architects, interior designers, and carpenters.
(7) Entertainment
There’s a whole new world to play in. If the global popularity of the AR-powered smartphone game Pokemon Go wasn’t an omen of the bright future to come in AR entertainment, we now have a host of complex and interactive games and applications using AR.
Not only that, but now we can also interact with motion-sensor devices to play games that require physical activity, in a virtual AR world, such as golf, tennis, etc. Fitness and other endurance sports are also being revamped to cater to indoor audiences who can now overcome the boredom of indoor training and lonely treadmills by interacting and competing against other indoor users online.
Coming forward through this exciting period of innovation in AR technology, our interests are being protected and improved for the future. We are now able to reduce meaningless outdoor activities that waste resources (such as fuel for traveling) and encourage a more sensitive, perceptive world!
