The Real World Web: the Link Between AR, VR and The IoT
By Alex & Philipp Hertel, Ph.D
Co-Founders of Xperiel
The popularity of games like Pokemon GO, movies like Ready Player 1 and Ender’s Game, and hardware like Oculus Go or Google Daydream have all heightened business and consumer interest in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). The increased buzz has also generated genuine confusion about the differences between these two technology domains. As a result, people often refer to AR when they mean VR and vice versa. At other times, no distinction is made at all and these terms are used interchangeably.
Brands that want to invest in these technologies, especially since they’re quickly becoming popular with consumers, must understand the difference between the two and be able to recognize the value they can provide before investment decisions can be made.
AR’s greatest value lies in combining the digital and physical worlds to create something more powerful than either could be on its own. AR (including so-called ‘Mixed Reality’, or MR, which is just shorthand for “good AR”) works by overlaying or augmenting physical reality with digital graphics, information, services, inputs, or games, sometimes inserted over the live camera feed from a mobile device. Layar’s app, for instance, was based on this idea: Adding information over your camera’s view of the environment and using the phone’s compass to point it all in the right direction. Pokemon GO has quickly become the best-known example of AR, overlaying a GPS-based digital game over the physical world to enable hours of fun. Speaking more generally, all geo check-ins and even QR codes should be considered a form of augmented reality because that’s what these inputs are doing: providing digital inputs anchored in an analog world in order to augment its reality.
VR is designed to replace or provide an escape from the physical world rather than augmenting it — for better or worse. By contrast, when you use AR, you’re still in the real world, only a digitally-enhanced version of it. VR is different from AR in that it doesn’t reside in the real world, but rather purely in cyberspace. Like in Ernest Cline’s vision, VR takes you out of the physical world and places you entirely into a digital realm like Ready Player 1’s OASIS. If you’ve had a chance to try a Samsung Gear VR, an HTC Vive VR, or another of a multitude of VR devices currently on the market, you’ll quickly realize that they can simulate the top of a mountain or the field of a sports stadium within your own home.
The fact that AR helps users to interact with the real world gives it an edge as a utility technology for businesses. In fact, many companies and startups have already been using mobile apps to connect a virtual world over the real one to great success.
Uber (one of the fastest-growing companies in history) is a good example of a company that allows users to interact with a digital application to summon a car in the real world. The Starbucks app (one of the most successful branded apps) is so valuable precisely because you use it at the brand’s brick-and-mortar cafes by having their baristas physically scan your phone. Google Maps (arguably the most useful app in history) is another great example, not to mention the Pokemon GO game, which is one of the fastest-growing apps in history.
However, while mobile devices can open the door to augmented reality, like with Yelp’s, almost a decade-old, Monocle experience, they are not AR devices on their own. A mobile device — whether its a smartphone, tablet or laptop, does contain sensors that allow it to interact with the real world but the vast majority of mobile apps don’t use these sensors and instead function merely as hardware version of internet browsers. They don’t touch the real world at all. Simply look at the mobile apps on your phone right now and you’ll see that most of them aren’t ‘mobile’ in any meaningful sense. Is there anything profoundly “mobile” going on in your apps that give you access to email, calendar, Twitter, CNN or Facebook? The answer is no — today’s apps barely use the sensors in your phone to create truly compelling mobile interactions in the real world.
To make mobile technology truly mobile, we’ve developed and patented a concept that we call the ‘Real World Web’ (RWW). It can be conceptually expressed as a Venn diagram showing the intersection of the digital and physical worlds. This combination is home to much of the innovation in today’s technology market and includes the third key pillar of the RWW, alongside AR and VR — the internet of things (IoT).
The Internet of Things (IoT) is an important part of the RWW because it provides real-world outlets for consumers to connect with the digital world. As a result of the IoT, soon it won’t just be our computing devices such as phones, watches, tablets, and computers that connect to the Internet. We’re already seeing digitally-connected versions of thermostats, radios, sprinkler systems, refrigerators, home security systems, cars, televisions, and stereos along with pretty much everything else that runs on electricity. The IoT will soon connect most electrical devices and be so powerful precisely because it’s going to push the Internet into the real world to create seamlessly-integrated ecosystems that provide entirely new games, services, information, and user experiences which combine both the digital and physical reality.
Connecting AR and the IoT with digitally-interactive apps like Uber, Starbucks and Pokemon GO creates an unprecedented opportunity for innovative technology companies that can help them become the leaders in consumer appeal for the next decade. Why? Much like the Klondike after the Gold Rush, the traditional notion of cyberspace has already been explored. It’s possible that there’s still more unique, original ideas buried there, but most of the nuggets close to the surface have long since been collected. AR, VR and the IoT, by contrast, have much fertile ground still unexplored and will likely be a place where tomorrow’s unicorn-size companies will make their mark. A thriving, consumer-facing IoT, when combined with slick and responsive AR and affordable VR will enable valuable real-world technologies that resemble Pokemon GO or brand apps like Starbucks.
Technologies like AR, VR and IoT still have some time until they become mainstream. VR, for example, will continue to struggle until the hardware becomes affordable and intuitive to every level of consumer. Connecting these different technologies on one network layer that allows applications, mobile devices and IoT infrastructure to interact together allows technology like AR and IoT to become universally accessible to users and gives companies new ways of connecting with potential customers. The Real World Web was created to do exactly that and we think its the only real way forward to a future that is customizable, intuitive and digital in nature.
