The History and Future of AR

The term "augmented reality" has been around since 1990 but that doesn’t mean that it was never there before. The moment that man-made gadgets that could relate to their environment and supply their users with information based on that, AR was there. It’s just that nobody thought to call it that.

 So, for those who want to know how it all went down, here is the history of augmented reality from birth to where we are today.

 Beginnings

From 1957, a gentlemen known by the name of Morton Helig began building a machine called the Sensoria. It was designed as a cinematic experience to take in all your senses and, shaped, rather like arcade machine from the 80s, it blew wind at you, vibrated the seat you sat on, played sounds to your eyes and projected a form of a stereoscopic 3D environment to the front and sides of your head. It was supposed to be impressive with its demo film of a cycle ride through the streets of Brooklyn but it never sold commercially and was very expensive to make films for largely because it involved the camera man having three cameras strapped to him at all times, and while it was really more an adventure in full virtual reality, there are clearly elements of AR involved with both the devices in place between the user and the environment and that fact that the environment itself was, itself, the real world viewed in a real time situation - even if recorded.

In 1966 Professor Ivan Sutherland of Electrical Engineering at Harvard University invented the first model of one of the most important devices used in both AR and VR today - the head-mounted display or HMD. It was a monumental piece of kit that was too heavy for the human head to actually bear and so hung suspended from the ceiling of the lab instead which was how it got its nickname as The Sword of Damocles. Being early in the scale of computer technology, its graphical prowess was fairly limited and provided just simple wireframe models of generated environments. Nonetheless, it was the first step in making AR a usable possibility.

 

AR is born

While it might have been around for a few years in one shape or other, the phrase Augmented Reality is supposed to have been coined by Professor Tom Caudell while working in Boeing’s Computer Services' Adaptive Neural Systems Research and Development project in Seattle. In a search to find an easier way to help the aviation company’s manufacturing and engineering process he began to apply virtual reality technology and eventually came up with some complex software that could overlay the positions of where certain cables in the building process were supposed to go. It means the mechanics didn't have to ask or tries to translate from what they found described in abstract diagrams in manuals.

 

At the same time, in 1992, two other teams were made big steps into this new world. LB Rosenberg creates what’s widely recognized as the first functioning AR system for the US Air Force known as VIRTUAL FIXTURES where fixtures were what he described as cues to help guide the user in their task and did so in very big letters.

 A second group, also fond of capping things up, made up of Steven Feiner, Blair MacIntyre and Doree Seligmann - all of whom now lead in the field of AR - submitted a paper on a prototpye system they called KARMA (Knowledge-based Augmented Reality for Maintenance Assistance). The team from Columbia Uinversity built an HMD with Logitech-made trackers attached to it and the object they were dealing with - a printer. The project was then to develop 3D graphics of a ghost image to show people how to load and service the machine without having to refer to instructions. The paper went down rather well and was widely cited within the science community.

 And just to prove it’s not all work, work, work, AR hit the arts world in 1994 as Julie Martin (presumably not of Neighbors fame) became the first person to bring the concept into public performance. She created a government-funded show in Australia, sounding rather like a ITV celeb show, called Dancing in Cyberspace where dancers and acrobats interacted with virtual objects projected into the same physical space as themselves. Sadly, we haven’t been able to track down any reviews.

 

The app revolution

 Until 1999, AR remained very much a toy of the scientist. Expensive, bulky equipment and complicated software all meant that the consumer never even knew of this growing field. As far as they were concerned, explorations into virtual worlds had died along with the Lawnmower Man. All that was to change though when Hirokazu Kato of the Nara Institute of Science and Technology released the AR Toolkit to the open source community. For the first time, it allowed video capture tracking of the real world to combine with the interaction of virtual objects and provided a 3D graphics that could be overlaid on any OS platform. Although the smartphone was yet to be invented, it was what allowed a simple, handheld device with a camera and an internet connection to bring AR to the masses. Almost all of the Flash-based AR you see through your web browser will have been possible because of the ARToolKit.