The BBC has an article: Mobile phones get cyborg vision that got me thinking about the number of times I've seen examples of augmented reality demonstration projects recently.
This article states:
"Via the video function of a mobile phone's camera it is now possible to combine a regular pictorial view with added data from the internet just as the fictional Terminator was able to overlay its view of the world with vital information about its surroundings."
There are been a number of interesting demonstrations in the last year and quite a bit of on-going research. One of the more interesting demos is the Sixth Sense Ted Video.
As consumer devices are deployed in the enterprise and push the range of what's possible, there are many opportunities for organizations to reduce complexity and improve visibility to real world situations. As more sensor data is available and the ability to display the information becomes more flexible we can both enhance the ability of objects to sense their environment as well as change our own abilities and view them differently with augmented reality techniques. I believe this will be a new frontier for business value generation for IT in the coming decade, and further extend one of my predictions for 2008.
