The 10 coolest things happening with augmented reality right now
Microsoft's augmented reality headset, the HoloLens, lets a roboarmy invade your living room. It debuts next year.
Disney created an app that allows children to draw a 3D character in real time.
The app captures a drawing and projects it into a 3D image. It may not be as high-tech as most augmented reality technology, but its more accessible than a pricey headset and lets children see how their drawing would look in 3D as they are working on it.
People who wear castAR glasses can do anything from attacking giant robots to pulling up YouTube videos midair.
castAR was successfully crowdfunded via Kickstarter last year and early backers are just starting to receive their glasses. The company is also working on using augmented reality to create shared interfaces so people can play and work together.
Microsoft's HoloLens can also be used to teach anatomy to medical students.
"By creating simulations with the HoloLens that lets [medical students] have an experience where they can fail, that would be the best way to learn because we don't allow people to fail too much in real medicine," Dr. Neil Mehta said in Microsoft's video about the HoloLens.
UCLA created an augmented reality sandbox that lets you create erupting volcanoes, mountains, rivers and canyons.
An Xbox Kinect sensor detects and processes any shape made in the sandbox and projects it as a color-coded contour map, the UCLA newsroom reports. Its mobile and can be set up in any classroom for undergraduate science courses.
Magic Leap has been hush about showing off their technology, but it'll let you do anything from shooting robots to pulling your email up out of thin air.
Magic Leap is a Florida-based augmented reality company that Google tech boss Sundar Pinchai sits on the board of (Google also led a $500 million round of fund raising for them).
Apple acquired Metaio, which makes augmented reality technologies, in May.
Metaio technologies creates apps that can do anything from providing visual instructions about how to fix a car (in this case, how to change your oil) to letting you time travel the Berlin Wall.
WayRay uses augmented reality technology to project holographic images on your windshield so you don't have to look away from the road for directions.
The technology, named Navion, projects a full-color holographic image onto the car windshield. Navion provides the current speed, how far away the driver is, and when the next turn is. Meanwhile, the green arrows help guide the driver.
WayRay will launch a Kickstarter campaign for Navion later this October. By the end of the year, the company plans to finalize the product's design and begin worldwide shipment in May of 2016.
This man created cards that turn into 3D characters for kids to play with.
When the corresponding app is open, kids can place the "Magic Cards" in front of a tablet's camera to see 3D images of animals, play games in 3D, and even learn different languages in an interactive way. Like Disney's drawing app, Magic Cards is an example of accessible, light-form augmented reality technology.
The " target="_blank">Indiegogo campaign for the cards, known as Magic Cards, is over its goal with less than a week to go.
NASA paired up with Osterhout Design Group to design augmented reality glasses that will allow astronauts to more easily fix things in space.
NASA originally approached Google about making the augmented reality glasses, but was turned down when the tech giant said they would prefer to focus on consumers. Astronauts would wear the glasses aboard the International Space Station, where they would provide visual instructions about how to fix equipment (similar to what we saw with Metaio).
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