Special thanks to the great team at The Where Business who alerted me to this video about the fresh new notion of Articulated Naturality or AN.
AN is set to take Augmented Reality (AR) to a whole new level. With an AN app, you could point at a hotel building, zoom in on a particular room, and find out whether it is available for that night or not. The company pitching AN widely is QPC, who particpated in the recent Summer Davos Conference.
Check out the video, where Matt Trubow, QPC CIO, explains why AN is set to give a 'flat' AR a much richer three dimensional element or a 'virtual universe'...inspriring stuff...
San Francisco/Atlanta -The following is the press release from Metaio relating to their e-commerce Augmented Reality product that helps consumers see products in their own space (akin to the IKEA AR application in a previous blog post). It represents one more step towards AR becoming a mainstream technology.
The Internet changed how people shop. Now, YOUReality LLC and metaio Inc. are changing how people will shop online. With the introduction of its Online Retail Visualization 3D tool, YOUReality is making it possible for consumers to see products in their own space before they purchase them by integrating Augmented Reality into a suite of commerce applications. The new services allow shoppers to make more confident buying decisions, deliver retailers a higher sales conversion rate, and significantly lower product return costs.
Online shopping is attractive to an increasing number of consumers for its convenience, speed, product selection and other benefits. To make the shopping experience even more engaging and informative, many retailers are enhancing their websites with multimedia features such as video clips, virtual visualization or slide shows so that shoppers can better understand product features. With YOUReality, customers can even "bring it home" and try before they buy, allowing consumers to visualize context sensitive products with life-like 3D models in a photo of their own home environment. The resulting image provides a realistic view of what the object will look like in that space with the ability to move the item around (maintaining correct dimension and perspective) and change colors, styles, sizes and textures of the 3D object while viewing it in the photo.
By pioneering the concept of Retail Visualization using the metaio platform, YOUReality has harnessed the power of 3D for a practical purpose. "YOUReality gives a cool technology relevance in the world of commerce by driving retail sales through increased conversion rate," says YOUReality Founder, Michelle Fallon. "Retail Visualization takes the guesswork out of the visual aspects of shopping, such as selecting fabric choices, textures and colors, making the buying decision faster and easier because consumers can literally see furniture, electronics, appliances, even accessories, in their own space at the point of sale. Retail Visualization for e-commerce allows the user to visualize products in a web store and then add the selected items directly to the shopping cart to complete the transaction online," she says.
Woken up by my mobile phone alarm clock at 7am, thinking it was about time to change the tune of my music hologram wake up call. 'Quiet!' I shout at the mobile phone, turning the alarm off via the voice-activated command.
Time for a power breakfast, where I can pore over my favourite digital newspaper on my iKindle (it was only a matter of time before Apple and Amazon merged-think of the synergies!). Mmm...I need to re-program the coffee machine from my mobile, need more foamy milk on that cappuccino!
And while I'm at it, let me program the housebot (house robot) from my mobile so it feeds the cat at 5pm-can't think how we lived without those things before!
Out on the streets, I have some time for some early morning shopping before heading to my 'collaboration pod' at the office...I point my mobile's 50 MP camera at the supermarket and see through the Augmented Reality layer (can't believe this was so hyped only 10 years ago!) that there are some 2 for 1 offers at the Deli Counter..nice!
'And, Mr.Ferraro, may we suggest you try our Tuna-flavoured pizza topping today', says the Wal-Mart Digital Mobile Assistant, knowing that I tried the Tuna-flavoured pasta 3 times in a row last week.Maybe, I think..damn shame all we have today is tuna-flavour, and no real tunas anymore....
Shopping finished, time to head to work. 'Your body temperature is 0.3 degrees below optimal' says my mobile, having detected my body heat through its sensors. 'Long sleeves are recommended', it continues.Damn! I need to turn that auto-sensor off, it drives me crazy.Plus, now all my friends will have received the auto-chirp from it in real time, and will think I am a cissy!
Anyway, I checked the YaGoogle Weather Forecast this morning, and it said the day will warm up later.Just as well, the kids will be going to school this afternoon, after their remote-learning video classroom from home.
After a full day of holo-video conference calls, I'll be ready for a good gym work-out! My Mobile Personal Trainer (that speaks to me with a realistic Arnold Schwarzenegger voice) has me on a tough, fat-burning regime. Just as well that at my age, all my bio-data is wired in real-time to my virtual doctor, who is always there to send me a pop-up alert should things get too extreme.
As I enter the gates to my office and approach the main door where my retina will be scanned once more and cross-checked to my Personal Digital Identity (PDI) Key on my mobile , I have one of those thoughts we sometimes get: boy, how technology has moved on in the last decade!
For those of you who missed it, last August an AR concept for IKEA was launched based on a simple premise of allowing customers to picture what a certain piece of furniture would like in their home. The concept reflects the increasing possibilities of Augmented Reality to marry the real with the digitally-enhanced world within sound commercial solutions.
The application, of which you can see some screenshots below, allows users to view an overlaid picture of the desired piece of furniture and place it within the intented position in a room by viewing the room through the mobile device's videocamera.
The user can also save the picture and send it via MMS if they wish to do so.
While it may be some time before these types of applications become mainstream, the current prediction for smartphone sales suggests this will be sooner than you think. Smartphone sales that support AR apps account for less than 20% of the overall global market but are growing fast and are predicted to reach 50% of the mobile market within the next five years.
