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Next Tech Forward the $500 Phab 2 Pro, the first Tango- enabled smartphone. Using multi• ple cameras and advanced, motion-tracking sensors, the Phab 2 creates 3-D maps from two- dimensional images. Train the phone's lens on your living room, V and Tango will know the lamp is six feet to the left of the couch. You can then use a Tango-optimized app from e-commerce giant Wayfair to see how a (virtual) coffee table looks between them. Lowe's Home Im• provement has a similar app, along with one that allows customers to use the phone's camera to navigate its stores. Such efforts are early and their executions fairly crude. Lenovo's embrace of Tango is more of a proof of concept than a groundbreak• ing device. But that may change quickly. The second Tango-enabled phone, the Asus ZenFone AR, lands this summer. And according to ru• mors, the upcoming iPhone 8 will also sport a depth-sensing camera to enable AR apps. Notably, Apple typically waits until a technology experiences, a WeChat-like reposi• What pieces of this hyperbole The ability to replace your nose is mature—and consumers are tory of third-party apps-within- might actually prove out? Here's with a dog snout or capture a Jiggly- ready—before incorporating it into its-apps. our three-part guide to how AR will puff lurking outside your favorite a flagship product. "Once the iPhone After years of dormancy, the actually unfold. café may appear frivolous, but it's has that [camera]," Inbar contends, hype around AR is ratcheting back actually profound—a clever way of "it will become a de facto standard." up. Beyond Facebook's augmented easing consumers into augmented ambitions (which include, down Our phones will be the reality, without calling it that. Snap- the road, a wearable device), there's gateway—for now chat now has a promising advertis• Wearables will be refined in Google's four-year-old Glass, Micro• For the better part of a decade, ing platform with its sponsored the workplace soft's HoloLens, and the mysterious, developers have been promising lenses, which can be tied to specific Despite the success of Snapchat well-funded Magic Leap—along to use smartphone cameras to locations. Niantic, the developer and Pokémon Go, nobody believes with a rumored device from Apple. enhance our perspective on the behind Pokémon Go, created a hit the future of AR consists of staring According to market research firm world. In 2009, Yelp introduced that has generated an estimated into smartphones, chasing mythi• CB Insights, 49 AR companies have its Monocle feature, annotating $1 billion-plus in revenue. In the cal creatures. secured equity financing deals users' camera lenses with ratings current rush to create the next big That's because the phone is a since last spring—a 75% increase for local businesses; a spate of AR app—from multiplayer games less-than-ideal interface. "Let's say from the year before. similar apps followed, but none to more practical applications, like you walk into a supermarket that's They're all vying to dominate gained any significant traction. interactive travel guides and shop• enabled with augmented reality," a future where the separation be• It was rainbow-vomiting millen• ping assistants—success may ulti• says Tuong Nguyen, principal tween the physical and the digital nial that pushed the technology mately depend on the formula that analyst for research firm Gartner. is wafer-thin, and you won't need a into the mainstream, with the these two companies laid out: social "How many times during your keyboard or a touch screen to navi• introduction of Snapchat's addic• interaction grounded by superior shopping trip are you willing to gate it. 'Augmented reality is the tive, selfie-enhancing Lenses in location intelligence. take out your phone? How long are next mobile computer, the next OS, September 2015. By the following At the same time, smartphones you willing to hold it up?" The big• the next social platform," says Ori August, Pokémon Go had 100 mil• are growing more sophisticated. gest hurdle for AR, Nguyen says: "It Inbar, founder of Super Ventures, lion downloads, as people peered Since 2014, Google has been devel• needs to be built into the glasses a VC firm specializing in AR. "The through their smartphones to hunt oping its Tango platform, which I'm already wearing." for Charmanders and Squirtles in smartphone is dead; it just doesn't gives mobile devices spatial aware• Today, there are some 50 AR habitats across the globe. know it yet." ness. Late last year, Lenovo released headsets in production, ranging 36 FastCompany.com July/August 2017 Just as the your car's rear-facing cam shows internet and mobile you a squiggly red line as you're changed the tech about to back into a tree, you're using AR. Smart mirrors are being Ta landscape, AR has rolled out at Sephora stores, to en• the potential to able virtual makeup testing, and create new giants. at Neiman Marcus, to let shoppers change the color of their outfits or try on prescription glasses. In the same way that "adaptive cruise from basic eyeglasses that can control" and "lane-change assist" display 3-D images to $20,000 are leading us toward fully autono• industrial-strength helmets from mous cars, AR will be insinuated maker Daqri. But none are small, into our lives one feature at a time. cheap, or elegant enough for mass Augmented features are also appeal. So for the next few years, likely to seep further into inexpen• AR devices will be found primarily sive wearables, as seen in Snapchat's in work environments, where their video-capture Spectacles and wire• cost and appearance don't matter as less earbuds like Apple's AirPods. much. ABI Research projects that Doppler Labs has already released EYE OF THE BEHOLDER the AR market will grow to $96 bil• its Here One smart earbuds, which How will people use augmented reality? It may be easier lion by 2021, with 60% of that going let you amplify certain frequencies to list the ways they won't. Here are a few applications in the to industrial and commercial uses. and filter out others—augmenting works, from the silly to the sublime. Google Glass, for example, has your aural reality. CEO Noah Kraft found a home on the factory floor sees a future where AR exists natu• after failing to take off among con• rally in your ear. "Say you're walking Not sure about that new tat? The down the street and all of a sudden Ink-free InkHunter app lets you create a preview sumers. Boeing uses Glass to dis• tattoos play technical diagrams to workers Siri pops into your head and says, anywhere on your body before you make a more permanent mistake. assembling electric wire harnesses 'Hey your next meeting is running for aircraft, leaving their hands free 15 minutes behind,'" he says. "In our world, that doesn't distract from For the new Jamie Foxx-hosted Beat to perform tasks. (When you're cut• Engaging ting assembly time by 25%, nobody what's going on around you." Shazam game show, Fox created AR-enabled ads billboards throughout New York that con• calls you a Glasshole.) And it's not Still, bringing the sophistica• jured a 3-D Foxx on viewers' phones. just Google Glass: Med-tech startup tion and reliability of industrial Scopis has made a HoloLens app applications to a device that fits to guide surgeons through spinal Sephora, L'Oreal, and CoverGirl offer in¬ seamlessly into our daily lives is a Virtual store displays and mobile apps that let surgery. At Minneapolis's Morten- daunting task. The technical chal• salons you see how makeup will look on your face son Construction, contractors can lenges are steep, and it's unclear without having to apply it. don a Daqri Smart Helmet, walk whether the public will embrace through a 3-D model of a hospital yet another wearable (and if the Smart windshields, which project informa• under construction, and see where content will be good enough to con• Roadside tion on where you are and where you're the plumbing will be routed before vince them to). Nonetheless, Apple assistance headed, are becoming more common as it's actually in place. is reportedly plunging ahead, as are automakers and startups alike find new ways to bring them to drivers. Widespread industrial use won't Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and just change the way we work; it will many others. Microsoft is working with ed-tech com• inform future consumer-facing For tech firms, getting skin in Classroom products. Just as industrial work• the AR game may simply be a mat• pany Lifeliqe on HoloLens-based curricula, aids such as a virtual tour of the human circula• ers use AR to summon remote ter of survival. Just as the internet tory system. assistance during complicated ma• and mobile radically changed the neuvers, homeowners who want to tech landscape, AR has the potential retile their bathrooms may one day to create new giants while hum• Startup Proximie allows experienced Remote surgeons to view operations remotely and turn to a pair of glasses for virtual bling old ones, says Piers Harding- medicine provide AR instructions to physicians per• walk-throughs and diagrams. Rolls, director of games research forming them. for IHS Technology, a London-based research firm. AR will surround us Aira makes smart glasses for blind people The future, in other words, will be Seeing-eye that send a video feed to a customer- In the meantime, AR is continuing augmented.

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