Blog Discussion: Limitations & Unexpected Dangers of Augmented Reality

After years of research, AR has been developing in an amazing pace. In short years, it would surely dwell into our everyday life and become a part of it. Yet now, despite the innovative and promising character of AR applications there are still lots of barriers to overcome in order to ensure consistency and efficacy of the AR approach. Optical, technical and human-factor limitations are still at large to be resolved.

One of the limitations would be of the computer generated virtual objects must be accurately registered with the real world in all dimensions. Meaning, the objects in the real and virtual worlds must be properly aligned with respect to each other, or the illusion that the two worlds coexist will be compromised. Without accurate registration, AR will not be accepted in many applications, as the errors in this registration will prevent the users from seeing the real and virtual images as merged.

Registration errors are hard to adequately control because of the high accuracy requirements and the numerous sources of error, which are static error and dynamic error. Static errors are the ones that cause registration errors even when the user’s viewpoint and the objects in the environment remain completely still. On the other hand, either dynamic errors are the ones that have no effect until the viewpoint or the objects begin moving. Up to now, dynamic errors are by far the major contributors to registration errors, but static errors cannot be ignored either. According to Azuma, when the user is operating an AR system in a static, or fixed, context the errors are usually derived from distortion in the head mount display (HMD) optics, mechanical misalignments in the HMD, errors in the headtracking system.

Yet, the AR functions are believed to be too complex for commercial applications purposes. This is due to the low image quality and hardware limitations current camera adapted devices such as PDA, mobile phones or webcams. Technical limitations relating with movement tracking and display is still currently lacking accuracy. But, this is still solvable with powerful equipments. For instance, the camera on our mobile phones would be one of the ways to apply some basic applications. As such, it is firmly believed that due to the complexities in AR, even though engineers are able to have the potential ability to create a reliable system, as because of the hardware inconsistencies, error in human calculations, software failures, and response time delays, we will not ever have a perfect AR system.

All of this would be fixed, but with a lump sum of investment into it. Even after perfection, companies would still consider whether or not to invest into it as it would be costly at first to invest into all the machinery supplies. LEGO for example would have to purchase screens for the retail shops as well as the cameras to capture the movements of the customer and product on it. The costs of the software itself and the extra costs of the packaging itself is still yet to be counted in. Therefore, is there really any need for this new technology to be added on to products would still be a puzzle?

Over with the limitations, and now into the unexpected dangers of AR. First of all would be the privacy issues. AR, without doubt would arise privacy issues as it could invade the privacy of organizations into it. This would mean both internal as well as external users. Both would happen to have access to information of the business. For example, if used on persons in a dating company, all personal data would be revealed on the person to others, this means also to complete strangers causing unwarranted breaches of privacy. With the AR technology invented, it would not be just Twitter that lets users to “geotag” their online data, but everything will. With the rise of AR applications merged with “geotagging”, and “interesting” phenomenon will happen: there are going to be moments when you either reveal who you are, or where you are at exactly the most inopportune instant (Kit Eaton 2009). So, in the coming future, how are you going to protect your “geotagging” along with your other online data?

Social acceptance is also being seen as a dispute in this field. Given a system with ultimate hardware and an instinctive edge which is yet to be achieved, how can AR become an accepted part of a user’s everyday life, just like a mobile phone or a personal digital assistant (PDA)? Through the media, many people are familiar with images of simulated AR. However, enforcing this technology in our everyday life means arising number of issues. These range from public acceptance to privacy concerns. What if a person sees another and with the use of AR applications, withdraws the clothes from the images transmitted into the image capturing device and recorded it. Would it not be a crime to do so? Who would it be to judge. To date, little attention has been placed on these fundamental issues. However, these must be addressed before AR becomes widely accepted.

With this sort of AR technology, eventually the society would be totally different. There would be no more need of sales assistant in this society. Let’s think of it, schools would be without teachers, travel agency industry would no longer be needed and you should know about the shops, it’s without sales assistants. All of these would be replaced with holographic images of them. There would be no need of manpower anymore in these industries. . For this particular reason, one must think how it will be utilized for the sake of humankind, and how it will be able to get man involved into the total workforce as well. Otherwise all this technology brings not convenience to the human race, but a total nightmare.

References:

http://books.google.com.my/books?id=P00EWiefUWQC&pg=PA440&dq=limitations+of+augmented+reality&hl=en&ei=cmaxTJfLF5TEvQOh1Pz4Bg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=limitations%20of%20augmented%20reality&f=false