Augmented Reality Research Paper/Essay free essay sample

Augmented reality can be defined as a composite or an illusive view of the physical world created by computer generated information, images and graphics. How did it start? Well it was first initiated by Morton Heilig who was an American cinematographer and philosopher. He experienced with the help of a partner and developed the â€Å"sensorama† from 1957 to 1962. The â€Å"sensorama† consisted of a big bulky device shaped like an arcade game in which the player has to sit and it gave him the experience of riding a motorcycle in a 3d virtual view of the world. He felt the wind blowing on their face, the vibration of the seat and even different smells of the city. He combined visual image, breeze and vibrations altogether to come up with the idea of creating â€Å"The Cinema of the Future†. He was then named â€Å"The Father of Virtual Reality†. Later on, came Ivan Sutherland who was a computer scientist and a professor at Harvard University. Furthermore, in late 2000 a research-professor named Hirokazu Kato Developed the ARToolKit which is an application that allows you to combine virtual graphics with the real life. It uses video tracking to overlap computer graphics on a video camera. The 3d virtual character appears to be standing on a real cardboard. When the user moves the cardboard, the virtual haracter moves with it and appears attached to the real object. This is a recent breakthrough in the print media industry because they began to integrate AR into their publications. So Augmented Reality is about enhancing our daily lives by means of incorporating digitized information into real objects. Nowadays the most common form of AR can be seen integrated with Smartphones being widely used or combining a special camera to a pc and have the experience. One of the key difficulties in developing AR applications is the problem of tracking the user’s viewpoint. In order to know from what viewpoint to draw the virtual imagery, the application needs to know where the user is looking in the real world. And this is done by using computer vision algorithms to solve the problem. There is a growing dependency on technology that pushes scientists, designers and developers to explore deeper and experiment further. Talk about the rewards and impacts it is having on the way we see the world, and the drawbacks of using it on a day-to-day basis as the dependence is increasing rapidly.