Augmented Reality, Beyond Virtual Objects Floating in Physical Space

Within the last few years Augmented Reality (AR) has left the research labs, and is now one of the technologies promising to change the way we use and interact with computers. With the rise of IoT our physical world is getting more intertwined with the digital realm, and physical objects often holds associated digital information. Augmented reality is a useful tool to consume, understand and interact with this digitalized physical world, and recent hardware and software advances within AR has made implementation of AR applications easier than ever. However, we have still not seen the revolution and it seems like the most successful applications have only enabled us to look at virtual animals or enhance our selfies with rainbows and animated dog ears. While this is definitely cool, it is not the radical change we have been promised.

In cooperation with several companies I have implemented multiple augmented reality prototypes, to investigate how AR can support workflows by giving users access to the vital digital information associated with physical artifacts.

In this talk I will share insights and war stories from this work. I will highlight the challenges we face when we need to make applications that can actually enhance workflows and be useful beyond the initial wow factor. I will cover common misconceptions, pitfalls and breakdowns, and discuss what we are currently technically capable of, and what challenges we must solve in order to make AR the promised game changer. And I will of course show some tech demos of virtual objects floating in physical space.