Limitations of AR

Augmented reality has been a fascinating and exciting topic to discuss in the last few posts. Certainly the technology has come a long ways from its roots in virtual reality. Augmented reality has evolved from the cumbersome head-mounted device to mobile phones. Its current implementation on the mobile phone has shaped augmented reality into what it is today. Along its development path, augmented reality has met some challenges since the technology is dependent on the advancement of computers and the digital network. Where it will take off in the future is still to be determined. Augmented reality still has some challenges and limitations to overcome.

Some of augmented reality’s limitations include rendering digital data into meaningful graphics and scaling it to fit the perspective of the visual field. In mobile phones, augmented reality must work with limited processing power, small amount of memory, and little storage. As for the 2D matrix cards, it depends on a webcam and computer, and it has become more of an illusion seen on the computer.

A current concern about augmented reality has to be marketing and advertising. As with many other technologies, financial motives will determine augmented reality’s survival. The big question is how to make money with augmented reality. Where marketers hope to use augmented reality is by placing products or ads as part of the search features used on mobile phone applications. How far will ads go? Will small business and local shops lose out to big companies who can pay augmented reality developers to exclude those companies? Instead of an unbiased search of city restaurants, will it be flooded with McDonalds and Subways. Hopefully this wouldn’t be the case but augmented reality applications are dependent on developers who must tag digital data to make it meaningful and useful for the user. A disturbing version of the future of augmented reality has to be the one depicted by Keiichi Matsuda where consumerism rules augmented reality as seen in the video.

Augmented (hyper)Reality: Domestic Robocop from Keiichi Matsuda on Vimeo.

An area of concern as augmented reality develops is privacy. There are hopes that augmented reality will allow a device to be pointed at a person and get information on that person. What if you didn’t want to share this information? Luckily augmented reality identification is still a dream concept. The challenge of developing such a tool is teaching a computer and camera to perform facial recognition and use the network to compare photos on the Internet. The facial or image search could match profiles on many social networks and use the personal data to provide birth date, marital status, or sexual preference. However, it would take a sophisticated database to perform an augmented reality search on people. This brings up the social awkwardness of pointing devices at people. It is already odd to see people talking out loud to no one to only find out they are talking on their mobile phone through an inconspicuous microphone. Now it would even be crazier to have people pointing mobile phones at someone to get to know them.

Despite augmented reality’s hype, it is limited in its technology and has far to go to become an everyday tool. The challenges augmented reality faces include social acceptance, addressing privacy, and becoming profitable for businesses to use it. These challenges are small hurtles and I am certain that augmented reality will be a part of our digital lives.