Nesterenko S. D., Sokolova N. O., Osadcha O. V.

Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National University

THE TECHNOLOGY OF AUGMENTED REALITY

Nowadays Augmented Reality has become a popular trend. That technology is very promising, and actual: the wide use of smartphones and wireless internet creates fertile soil for the development of augmented reality. It can be useful for many purposes, such as scientific research, education, medicine, military area, navigation, commerce, entertainment. It can be used for many social and common tasks.

Augmented Reality is a term used to describe all projects designed to augment reality with virtual components like sound, video, text, graphics, GPS data, and sensory input. Augmented Reality is designed to enhance one’s perception of reality.

Most advanced Augmented Reality technologies are computer vision and object recognition. They help make information of surrounding world interactive, and create a virtual layer of artificial information. Those technologies are based on mostly visual capture of real world objects, analysis, and processing of gathered information using special algorithms. In case of image, software has to derive real world coordinates using camera images, recognize places, buildings, etc. Software detect interest points, optical flow, and then use feature detection methods: corner detection, edge detection, blob detection, and image processing methods to gather data to restore coordinates from image. Known object geometry (architecture of certain buildings, for example) present in the scene is assumed to make process of recognition easier. Today there a lot of systems those rely on this technology: QR-codes, tagging systems, AR-browsers. Augmented Reality systems also use many other technologies. They are using accelerometers, compasses, gyroscopes, GPS, wireless internet connection, etc.

Now main platforms for Augmented Reality systems are smartphones operating systems like iOS, Android, Windows Phone. Now exist many Augmented Reality applications and services. Basic types of them are: tag systems which use QR-codes, or other markers to deliver links, show specific data like text, images, graphics. And AR-browsers those display digital information on the top of what you see through your camera (they can recognize real word objects like buildings, landmarks, logotypes and show information about them), show what is around you on the map.

Initially intense development of Augmented Reality started in the military area. In military sphere the application of Augmented Reality is in combat pilot head-up displays which provides information without distracting pilot, and in lifelike experience training systems. In the future it can be used to provide networked communication and navigation systems into the soldier goggles.

Development of Augmented Reality also started in medicine and industry and soon was transferred to an entertainment and commercial areas. And now it’s becoming usable in other areas as well, and it has a great perspective of applications. In medicine it will be able to provide surgeon information about patient state in his glasses, let combine X-ray, tomography, and ultrasound images with a real picture. In architecture and design it can simplify planning by live visualization of projects. In education it can advance interactivity giving students possibility to see experiments, theoretic models, and historical events sites, get in another workspace and interact with distant teachers in simulation. In office work it can improve productivity and make work more convenient. It can provide advanced commerce, navigation and live translation of speech and text. This technology can make possiblefree viewpoint television and cinema. In everyday use it can put useful information in field of view, provide organizer and navigator functions, live internet connection, phone calls, etc. All of these capacities can be realized with Augmented Reality goggles, which now is under development.

Nevertheless, it has some drawbacks. Integration of such technologies in our lives will increase influence of media and corporations on us, increase amount of information we’ll have to handle, and so stress level will grow as well. Privacy may be threatened. People can get too reliable. And live communication may be replaced by virtual.

So in conclusion, Augmented Reality is a very perspective technology that can find many applications in many areas and make peoples life more comfortable, but it requires careful and wide usage.