Augmented reality a click away

Headsets have a hefty price tag right now, but they will get smaller, cheaper and better over time

PICTURE this: your phone rings. You don’t need to look at a cellphone to see who’s calling because the name of the caller floats in mid-air, right in front of you. You can answer the call by swiping your finger left-to-right in mid-air, or ignore the call by swiping right-to-left.

You choose to answer the call, and you are immediately prompted to select the type of call: voice call or hologram call. You choose the latter and, as if by magic, the caller appears in front of you, as if they are physically present, just like in the Star Wars movies. When the call is done, the hologram disappears in a beautiful animation, like thousands of fireflies flying away.

In the future, making a call will be super-easy: you will either use voice commands or summon a virtual keypad by doing a “pinch to zoom” gesture in the air. You will then punch the numbers into the virtual keypad, and hit the virtual “call” button to make the call. The keypad will automatically disappear.

A different hand gesture will bring up a full qwerty keyboard in the air, or on any surface in front of you. You will type as you normally would on a physical keyboard and the letters will appear on a virtual page that floats in front of you.

If you are compiling a message, an upward flick of a finger will send it off. A mid-air “grasping” gesture, as if you are catching a ball, will send the message to the thrash.

If you are driving or walking and need directions, a series of arrows will appear on the road or walkway in front of you without obstructing your vision, leading you straight to your destination.

Online clothes shopping will be a whole lot of fun. You will be able to “try on” any garment by dressing up a holographic replica of yourself in the garment. You will be able to walk around this replica to see what you will look like from every angle.

All this may seem like technology of the distant future but, believe it or not, we will see this tech within the next four to five years. In fact, the technology already exists.

Augmented reality has been around for some time now. This is the technology that overlays computer-generated images and graphics on to live, real-world footage. If you have ever played with the camera apps that add funny costumes and facial features to a person as you hold up your phone camera to their face, then you will have used AR.

AR has also been implemented in many luxury cars in the form of heads-up displays.

There are also a number of AR headsets available, like Microsoft’s HoloLens, which bring the augmented reality experience straight to your eyes. You wear them like a pair of goggles, and the large built-in lenses project the images straight in front of your eyes, further enhancing the illusion that the graphics are a part of your reality.

Gesture-based controls are also old news. Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s Xbox Kinect gaming consoles have used gesture controls for years.

The technology certainly exists, but the issue is that in its current form it is large, clunky and extremely expensive. Microsoft’s HoloLens, for example, will set you back R75 000, and looks like a pair of futuristic scuba-diving goggles. Even if you can afford the price, you will definitely not want to go to the office looking like a scuba diver.

The good news is, AR headsets are getting smaller. California-based Magic Leap has significantly reduced the form factor of its headsets, making them much smaller than the HoloLens. With further research and development, AR headsets will definitely become small enough for daily use.

“Over the next 10 years, the form factor will get smaller and smaller,” according to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg, “and eventually we’ll have something that looks like a pair of glasses”.

A Silicon Valley-based start-up called Mojo Vision is taking things much further. It has recently raised $50 million for research and development of augmented reality contact lenses.

Yes, that’s correct: tiny little computers that will live in your eyes. The company refers to the concept as “invisible computing”.

According to its website, “It’s hard to imagine our lives without a device in our hands, but what if we could replace the screens that pull our focus away with something that elevates the world around us?”

Augmented reality is definitely the next phase in mobile computing, taking computing away from the confines of little hand-held devices into the real world, providing limitless possibilities. The technology is still in its infancy but, like the cellphone, it will get smaller, cheaper and better over time.

When it does, it will be exciting to see what brilliant concepts will be dreamed up by innovative AR app developers.

I believe that some of the most exciting uses of AR in the future will be in education and training.