It is called augmented reality or AR, and enables infinite applications in every realm. Subject to speculation ever since the 1970s, it has recently become possible to enhance user experience with augmented reality thanks especially to miniaturised electronics, with increasingly consumer-focused devices, which have been transforming our lives without us even realising it.

To define it, we can think of adding new elements generated through computer processing to a physical place (a landscape, a room) or an object (a car dashboard, for example). They may be written instructions, images, sounds, tactile stimuli and even smells: the result, mediated by mobile devices, webcams, viewers, audio systems or electronic gloves, is an enhancement of sensory perception with aspects that otherwise we would not be capable of discerning.

What differentiates it from virtual reality? The fact that the latter takes place within an environment that is (as the name indicates) completely virtual, while AR takes real locations and situations and overlays them with virtual information. Generating a completely different experience, which provides only the relevant signals with respect to the action under way. And with an immense array of applications, ranging from tourism to gaming by way of communication strategies, means of transport and even medicine.

Augmented reality applications: the case of culture

Rupert Till is a Professor of Music at the University of Huddersfield in Great Britain. It is thanks to him that today, while wandering around the Stonehenge megaliths, we can isolate ourselves from the noise of nearby roads, from the ringtones and chatting of tourists, to lose ourselves in the melodies of the wind and amongst the long-lost sounds of this mysterious place. Indeed, with his team, Till contributed to developing an app that makes it possible to perceive the sound setting of the archaeological site using a smartphone. Not only placing it back in the past, but also rendering it consistent with our position amongst the enormous stones, thanks to the overlay of acoustic analysis and architectural information.

But this is only one of the many possible examples. Today there is a range of software-hardware pairings capable of accompanying us through cities, historical places and museums, augmenting our experience as observers with new input. Sounds, sights (but not only) and overall our perception of reality becomes amplified.

Augmented reality applications: the case of health

In this field, the potential is to say the least astounding, and ranges from routine controls to more complex surgical interventions. It is sufficient to consider how augmented reality can represent a useful tool for training physicians, by making it possible to practice procedures through simulations (therefore with no contact with real patients). It also becomes possible to integrate the view of the operating room during surgeries with greater details, acquired through “eyes” even stronger than human eyes: a bit as if the surgeon him or herself could observe the patient with x-ray vision, or through magnetic resonance, in real time. Thus, operations become faster and safer, and the response to unexpected events becomes more immediate.

But there’s more. Scientists are working to employ augmented reality to protect mental health as well. They are aiming, for example, to help patients combat addictions and phobias, such as arachnophobia (the uncontrollable fear of spiders). Gradually coming into contact with the agent that triggers fear helps to overcome it in many cases, and treatments that involve controlled exposure to these agents (spiders, for example), making them appear here and there in a real environment, are showing themselves to be effective.

What the future of augmented reality holds in store

For a long time, we have been used to connecting this type of approach to gaming or entertainment. And yet, immersive strategies are even bearing fruit very, very far from what we could define as “recreation”. The world of design, architecture or plant engineering, where the functioning of an open space or of a lift can be refined through a smart virtual model. Police investigations, from the reconstruction of the scene of the crime to interactive road maps, or even the identification of a fugitive. Education and learning, where a tutorial is no longer only text or a video on YouTube, but rather a 360° experience.

If on one hand it is true that there are still many challenges for these technologies to overcome (not least, the costs), on the other hand we see big players like Google, Apple, Facebook and Snapchat (and others as well) working as never before to shape our way of interacting with the digital world and increasingly bringing them closer to us. It is precisely this pivot around which all innovations in this regard will revolve in 2018, and we certainly will have no difficulty realising this: indeed, it is estimated that, compared to the 11 billion dollars spent on products for augmented reality in 2017, more than 200 billion dollars will hinge on this market by 2021.