AUGMENTED REALITY: WHERE MIND AND MATTER MEET<br />By Kishore Jethanandani<br />A FuturistLens White Paper<br />January 28, 2011<br />Augmented reality is a looking glass into the reified world that it juxtaposes with the living reality as seen and felt. It enables us to superimpose data, imagery and video onto the real world we do see. Like the mythical blind men and the elephant, we misconstrue the world we see only partially from our angle of view. Augmented reality virtually completes the picture in an attempt to see the whole. <br />Mind and matter rarely meet on the first attempt. Perceptions change when rubber hits the road. Errors are made, costs are incurred and expectations are not necessarily met when the reality sinks in. The mind is about concepts, imagination, hunches and assumptions. Matter is about material results, dimensions and measurements, spaces and alignment, facts and figures, senses and satisfaction, action and performance. Augmented reality bridges the gaps between mind and matter and promises lower costs, reduces errors, improves performance and increases satisfaction for consumers. <br />Decision-makers want to able to guess right the outcomes. That’s time consuming and costly if several different options are possible. Imagine a home buyer looking at alternative properties, a tourist looking for a restaurant, a shopper looking for a product or a visitor at a festival. A home buyer evaluates information on the size of the home, its proximity to facilities like public transport, gyms, schools, parks and other places of interest. Augmented reality lets home buyers parse all of this information and physically check only on properties that interest them the most <br />Specific pieces of clothing, for example, might well look attractive when seen on the shelves of retail stores. Window shoppers find pleasure in looking at a whole variety of clothing but don’t necessarily buy them. Buyers don’t necessarily trust their first impressions. They prefer to try out clothing before they buy it. And they tolerate the tedium of going to dressing rooms and actually changing their clothing each time they want to check on an item on the shelves. It would be so much more convenient to do it virtually. And the images shared with friends and family to receive feedback. They could do it even faster if they could try out their options on-line. This is what an application from Zugara’s does for them. <br />A concept is to the mind as a demonstration is to matter. Teachers and trainers want to demonstrate a concept but it would be time-consuming to set up an experiment or show a trainee mechanic how a car works. BMW has used augmented reality to train a mechanic in step-by-step processes of repairing their cars. <br />There are other instances when our thoughts are an illusion. An experience that promised to be fun turns out to be a damp squib. Tourists remember the time when they spent a great deal of time travelling to an alluring spot that turned out to be disappointing. The next time they want a feel for a site to make sure they can have fun especially if they can choose from several of them. They want to experience a place virtually before they actually go there. Denver city, for example, lets tourists review public art available in the city, including information on the artwork and interviews with artists. <br />Our mind also plays tricks with us when we size up the dimensions of a space. Optical illusions are a common experience. The real world turns out to be quite different from our mental perceptions. Furniture buying, for example, is a challenge for families; what looks attractive in the stores may end up being clutter in an apartment or jarring when it does not mesh with the rest of their furnishings. Unlike clothing, however, customers try out furniture with a great deal more of pain. They have to actually assemble the parts in their homes before they have any chance of knowing whether their purchased furniture actually fits. IKEA made life a whole lot simpler for its customer with an augmented reality application which simulates how individual pieces of furniture would look in their homes. <br />There are many situations in which information and visualization of precise dimensions of related objects could speed up tasks in our daily lives. When mailing objects, users need to determine whether they fit the box used for shipment. The trial and error process could be frustrating because the boxes would have to be purchased first. US Post has a visual simulator to get it right with augmented reality. <br />Mental perceptions can be blurred by excess of information. A police-officer chasing a criminal absorbs information about the traffic and its density, the speed of vehicles, maps and routes, the landscape, weather and communications from the central office. He or she needs to filter all this information and determine the best course of action to nab the criminal without collateral damage to people or property in the vicinity. Augmented reality enables the encapsulation of all of this information, conveniently reified on the windscreen, with instructions from central office marked for the most optimal way to end the chase. <br />In the same vein, it is hard to get an arm around complex concepts such as the architectural design. For global sports events like Olympics, venues are chosen based on the quality of the architecture of the stadiums proposed. Competing countries or companies are invited to speak about their designs and judges select the venues. Augmented reality helps to bring to life the lines and diagrams that are incomprehensible to anyone outside the profession. <br />The practical possibilities for crafting business models are far reaching as large volumes of information become more digestible with augmented reality. Search costs are pervasive in business and daily life. Businesses lose money when customers return products that fall short of their expectations. Transaction costs, such as in the real estate business, are high as brokers spend a great deal of time with customers to assist them in finding the home of their choice. Marketing and advertising effectiveness is low when the content is not immersive enough. Customer buy-in for complex services such as the design and construction of new office complexes is delayed when a great deal of time is spent on evaluating designs and how they will work in reality. The cost of launching new products and services is high when buyers are unable to intuitively understand their utility. <br />All these costs can be lowered not only because augmented reality is visual and intuitive but also it can be configured at will. Product returns will be low when customers are able to virtually experience their ability to meet their needs. Transaction costs will be lower as searches can be done virtually on mobile or computer screens. Marketing and advertising costs will be lowered as customers share the immersive content that goes with them. Complex products are easier to sell when their utility is simulated in real life situations with ease. New products can be launched more easily as their use cases can be tested virtually and successful solutions communicated to customers in the context of their own environments and activities. <br /> <br />