Changing Realities for Business

Chapter 1. How AR Is Helping Manufacturing (and Other Uses That Show Promise)

When I wrote my first book, I focused specifically on augmented reality (AR) for industrial use. I did so because it has been the area, thus far, that has shown both the most promise and the most practical application. In manufacturing and industry, AR creators have piloted and rolled out applications that are saving people time and money.

Now we are at a new moment. Pokémon GO helped people—broadly—understand the idea of AR (even if it was only “sort of” AR). Facebook and Snapchat are now beginning to do that, too. The push toward AR by iPhone and iPad will create a similar tipping point among mass-market consumers. It’s not about the new AR-enabled iPhone itself or the splash it did or didn’t make upon launch—it’s more the wave it launched that is building momentum as ARKit spreads and more companies follow suit. Apple has a developer base of more than 275,000 people. That is clearly leading to the development of more and more AR apps. But it’s not the hardware, software, or even those apps that are making this an important moment in the development of AR. It’s that Apple championed the space so vocally that it motivated other big players to move into AR—as a strategic move. The big-company AR land rush has already begun.

On August 29, 2017, Google debuted ARCore, which combines motion tracking and contextual understanding of the environment to make it easy for Android developers to play in AR (which ...