Abbreviated as AR, Augmented Reality is a type of virtual reality that aims to duplicate the world’s environment in a computer. An augmented reality system generates a composite view for the user that is the combination of the real scene viewed by the user and a virtual scene generated by the computer that augments the scene with additional information. The virtual scene generated by the computer is designed to enhance the user’s sensory perception of the virtual world they are seeing or interacting with. The goal of Augmented Reality is to create a system in which the user cannot tell the difference between the real world and the virtual augmentation of it. Today Augmented Reality is used in entertainment, military training, engineering design, robotics, manufacturing and other industries.

When was it first developed?

• 1957-62: Morton Heilig, a cinematographer, creates and patents a simulator called Sensorama with visuals, sound, vibration, and smell.
• 1966: Ivan Sutherland invents the head-mounted display suggesting it was a window into a virtual world.
• 1975: Myron Krueger creates Videoplace that allows users to interact with virtual objects for the first time.
• 1989: Jaron Lanier coins the phrase Virtual Reality and creates the first commercial business around virtual worlds.
• 1992: Tom Caudell coins the phrase Augmented Reality while at Boeing helping workers assemble cables into aircraft.
• 1992: Steven Feiner, Blair MacIntyre and Doree Seligmann present first major paper on an AR system prototype, KARMA, at the Graphics Interface conference. Widely cited version of the paper is published in Communications of the ACM next year.
• 1999: Hirokazu Kato (加藤 博一) develops ARToolKit at the HITLab and it is demonstrated at SIGGRAPH that year.
• 2000: Bruce H. Thomas develops ARQuake, the first outdoor mobile AR game, and is demonstrated in the International Symposium on Wearable Computers.
• 2008: Wikitude AR Travel Guide launches on Oct. 20, 2008 with the G1 Android phone.
• 2009: AR Toolkit is ported to Adobe Flash (FLARToolkit) by Saqoosha, bringing augmented reality to the web browser.

How does it work ?

Some of the most exciting augmented-reality work is taking place in research labs at universities around the world. In February 2009, at the TED conference, Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry presented their augmented-reality system, which they developed as part of MIT Media Lab’s Fluid Interfaces Group. They call it SixthSense, and it relies on some basic components that are found in many augmented reality systems:

• Camera
• Small projector
• Smartphone
• Mirror

These components are strung together in a lanyardlike apparatus that the user wears around his neck. The user also wears four colored caps on the fingers, and these caps are used to manipulate the images that the projector emits.

SixthSense is remarkable because it uses these simple, off-the-shelf components that cost around $350. It is also notable because the projector essentially turns any surface into an interactive screen. Essentially, the device works by using the camera and mirror to examine the surrounding world, feeding that image to the phone (which processes the image, gathers GPS coordinates and pulls data from the Internet), and then projecting information from the projector onto the surface in front of the user, whether it’s a wrist, a wall, or even a person. Because the user is wearing the camera on his chest, SixthSense will augment whatever he looks at; for example, if he picks up a can of soup in a grocery store, SixthSense can find and project onto the soup information about its ingredients, price, nutritional value — even customer reviews.

By using his capped fingers — Pattie Maes says even fingers with different colors of nail polish would work — a user can perform actions on the projected information, which are then picked up by the camera and processed by the phone. If he wants to know more about that can of soup than is projected on it, he can use his fingers to interact with the projected image and learn about, say, competing brands. SixthSense can also recognize complex gestures — draw a circle on your wrist and SixthSense projects a watch with the current time.

Exampls of how it could be used.

Commonly known examples of AR are the yellow “first down” line seen in television broadcasts of American football games, and the colored trail showing location and direction of the puck in TV broadcasts of hockey games. The real-world elements are the football field and players, and the virtual element is the yellow line, which is drawn over the image by computers in real time. Similarly, rugby fields and cricket pitches are branded by their sponsors using Augmented Reality; giant logos are inserted onto the fields when viewed on television. Television telecasts of swimming events also often have a virtual line which indicates the position of the current world record holder at that timing.

Another type of AR application uses projectors and screens to insert objects into the real environment, enhancing museum exhibitions for example. The difference to a simple TV screen for example, is that these objects are related to the environment of the screen or display, and that they often are interactive as well.

Many first-person shooter video games simulate the viewpoint of someone using AR systems. In these games the AR can be used to give visual directions to a location, mark the direction and distance of another person who is not in line of sight, give information about equipment such as remaining bullets in a gun, and display a myriad of other images based on whatever the game designers intend. This is also called the head-up display.

Advertising: Marketers may consider using AR to promote a new product via an interactive, web-based AR application.

Support with complex tasks: Complex tasks such as assembly, maintenance, and surgery can be simplified by inserting additional information into the field of view. For example, labels can be displayed on parts of a system to clarify operating instructions for a mechanic who is performing maintenance on the system. AR can include images of hidden objects, which can be particularly effective for medical diagnostics or surgery. Examples include a virtual X-ray view based on prior tomography or on real time images from ultrasound or open NMR devices. A doctor could observe the fetus inside the mother’s womb. See also Mixed reality.

Navigation devices: AR can augment the effectiveness of navigation devices for a variety of applications. For example, building navigation can be enhanced for the purpose of maintaining industrial plants. Outdoor navigation can be augmented for military operations or disaster management. Head-up displays or personal display glasses in automobiles can be used to provide navigation hints and traffic information. These types of displays can be useful for airplane pilots, too. Head-up displays are currently used in fighter jets as one of the first AR applications. These include full interactivity, including eye pointing.

Industrial Applications: AR can be used to compare the data of digital mock-ups with physical mock-ups for efficiently finding discrepancys between the two sources. It can further be employed to safeguard digital data in combination with existing real prototypes, and thus save or minimize the building of real prototypes and improve the quality of the final product.

Military and emergency services: AR can be applied to military and emergency services as wearable systems to provide information such as instructions, maps, enemy locations, and fire cells.

Prospecting: In the fields of hydrology, ecology, and geology, AR can be used to display an interactive analysis of terrain characteristics. Users could use, and collaboratively modify and analyze, interactive three-dimensional maps.

Architecture: AR can be employed to virtually resurrect destroyed historic buildings as well as simulate planned construction projects.

Sightseeing: Models may be created to include labels or text related to the objects/places visited. With AR, users can rebuild ruins, buildings, or even landscapes as they previously existed. Combined with a wireless network, the amount of data displayed is limitless.

Collaboration: AR can help facilitate collaboration among distributed team members via conferences with real and virtual participants. Also see Mixed reality.

Entertainment and education: AR can be used in the fields of entertainment and education to create virtual objects in museums and exhibitions, theme park attractions (such as Cadbury World), and games (such as ARQuake, Parallel Kingdom, or The Eye of Judgment).Also see Mixed reality.

But augmented reality is not really futuristic stuff its just hasnt been implemented into reality very well at the moment because of the lack of technology for instance battery life of mobile phone or device battery drains very fast when using augmented reality programs and its slow at processing it all on screen. You can see an example of this from the first Terminator movie when the T-800 scans a motorbike and male to see if the clothes fit to him and what make the bike is or power.

Future uses of this technology

It is important to note that augmented reality is a costly development in technology. Because of this, the future of AR is dependent on whether or not those costs can be reduced in some way. If AR technology becomes affordable, it could be very widespread but for now major industries are the sole buyers that have the opportunity to utilize this resource.

• Expanding a PC screen into the real environment: program windows and icons appear as virtual devices in real space and are eye or gesture operated, by gazing or pointing. A single personal display (glasses) could concurrently simulate a hundred conventional PC screens or application windows all around a user
• Virtual devices of all kinds, e.g. replacement of traditional screens, control panels, and entirely new applications impossible in “real” hardware, like 3D objects interactively changing their shape and appearance based on the current task or need.
• Enhanced media applications, like pseudo holographic virtual screens, virtual surround cinema, virtual ‘holodecks‘ (allowing computer-generated imagery to interact with live entertainers and audience)
• Virtual conferences in “holodeck” style
• Replacement of cellphone and car navigator screens: eye-dialing, insertion of information directly into the environment, e.g. guiding lines directly on the road, as well as enhancements like “X-ray”-views
• Virtual plants, wallpapers, panoramic views, artwork, decorations, illumination etc., enhancing everyday life. For example, a virtual window could be displayed on a regular wall showing a live feed of a camera placed on the exterior of the building, thus allowing the user to effectually toggle a wall’s transparency
• With AR systems getting into mass market, we may see virtual window dressings, posters, traffic signs, Christmas decorations, advertisement towers and more. These may be fully interactive even at a distance, by eye pointing for example.
• Virtual gadgetry becomes possible. Any physical device currently produced to assist in data-oriented tasks (such as the clock, radio, PC, arrival/departure board at an airport, stock ticker, PDA, PMP, informational posters/fliers/billboards, in-car navigation systems, etc. could be replaced by virtual devices that cost nothing to produce aside from the cost of writing the software. Examples might be a virtual wall clock, a to-do list for the day docked by your bed for you to look at first thing in the morning, etc.
• Subscribable group-specific AR feeds. For example, a manager on a construction site could create and dock instructions including diagrams in specific locations on the site. The workers could refer to this feed of AR items as they work. Another example could be patrons at a public event subscribing to a feed of direction and information oriented AR items.

http://seesmic.tv/?list=public

Loads of random stuff here and AUGMENTED REALITY !

But yeh google it and you can see some awesome videos of how it works.

Photosynth is based on Photo Tourism, a research project by University of Washington graduate student Noah Snavely.^[2]

Microsoft released a free tech preview version on November 9, 2006. Users could view models generated by Microsoft or the BBC, but not create their own models at that time.^[3] Microsoft teamed up with NASA on August 6, 2007 allowing users to preview its Photosynth technology showing the Space Shuttle Endeavour. On August 20, 2007, a preview showing the tiles of Endeavour during the backflip process was made available for viewing.

On August 20, 2008, Microsoft officially released Photosynth to the public, allowing users to upload their images and generate their own Photosynth models.

The Photosynth technology works in two steps. The first step involves the analysis of multiple photographs taken of the same area. Each photograph is processed using an interest point detection and matching algorithm developed by Microsoft Research which is similar in function to UBC‘s Scale-invariant feature transform. This process identifies specific features, for example the corner of a window frame or a door handle. Features in one photograph are then compared to and matched with the same features in the other photographs. Thus photographs of the same areas are identified. By analyzing the position of matching features within each photograph, the program can identify which photographs belong on which side of others. By analyzing subtle differences in the relationships between the features (angle, distance, etc.), the program identifies the 3D position of each feature, as well as the position and angle at which each photograph was taken. This process is known scientifically as Bundle adjustment and is commonly used in the field of photogrammetry, with similar products available such as Imodeller, D-Sculptor, and Rhinoceros. This first step is extremely computationally intensive, but only has to be performed once on each set of photographs.

The second step involves the display of and navigation through the 3D point cloud of features identified in the first step. This is done with the publicly downloadable Photosynth viewer. The viewer resides on a client computer and maintains a connection to a server that stores the original photographs. It enables a user to, among other things, see any of the photographs from their original vantage point. It incorporates DeepZoom technology Microsoft obtained through its acquisition of Seadragon in January 2006. The Seadragon technology enables smooth zooming into the high-resolution photographs without downloading them to the user’s machine.

Found a interesting blog that has some interesting ideas

http://www.juzaforum.com/forum-en/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9603

If your interested in photography I know some sites you guys might like 

http://www.panoguide.com/

http://www.ephotozine.com/

http://www.juzaphoto.com/

http://www.marktucker.com/Artist.asp?ArtistID=16186&Akey=MPEGN7AE

http://www.mir.com.my/rb/photography/

http://www.prime-junta.net/pont/Photography_lessons/a_about/_Teaching_composition.html

http://www.photozone.de/

http://photo.net/

http://www.outbackphoto.com/