Augmented reality development and its applications

The technologies used in games, which became a millionaire market and much coveted by the young audience, brought achievements, and with it came knowledge. The world has become connected to cell phones. With this, it is necessary to adapt to the modern world.

Creating an application:

The app market is a market with exorbitant growth, this market is very coveted by companies in general, an example is Uber with rapid growth becoming a power in the market.

To develop an application, you must first do a study identifying the problem, through questions and following a script. The suggested steps are:

• Definition of objectives;
• Identification of the target audience; 
• Market analysis; 
• Search for the problem;
• Project outline; 
• Development of the Augmented Reality Application.

The development of an application leads us to define the actions that we must take. These guidelines give a written idea for the beginning of the work in the realization of a project. Outlining the objectives is of paramount importance to design a well-defined application. The definition of the target audience depends on the objectives outlined, where it is crucial to know the purposes of the application.

These definitions help to develop an application. 

Augmented Reality and its applications in product development:

Augmented reality development can be set in real-time within the user’s environment. Objects generated by computers coexist from a multisensory interaction with the use of the human senses. A wide range of technologies is positioned between the real and virtual environments, thus forming a mixed reality.  

Augmented Reality has been using prototyping support tools, allowing time reduction and flexibility in projects and adding functionality to prototypes. In the beginning, it was used to replace physical elements, and currently, it provides a much more immersive experience, as with the Playstation 3 onwards.

Application construction:

For the development of an Augmented Reality application, Unity and Vuforia can be used, which are two specialized software in games to simulate scaled images. It is possible to use tangible interfaces that interact with each other, requiring the installation of versions with Android platforms.

As for the tools, the ARToolkit is a library that allows applications in Augmented Reality. A well-known type of marker is the QR code, which is a 2D code that can be read by a smartphone camera or a webcam.

There is also Wikitude, which projects virtual data into the real world. Its system is compared to HMD, which are portable devices, provided with a camera, which uses the video-see-through technique, display used with glasses, or also with handheld displays, such as tablets and smartphones.

When choosing your SDK and your tool to develop your APK (application), the script presented below is the most famous in the use of the Unity and Vuforia tools so that it is possible to run your application.

The first step is to download and install Unity and create the required licenses for both tools.

Then comes the aspect of creating 3D content, with scenarios and idealized objects. Characters and scenarios with static or animated objects, modeled and animated scenarios, are possible, but they are very laborious and without manual and artistic talent it becomes much more difficult, such as moving objects and approaching their geometry with 3 spheres. However, there is the option of obtaining ready-made objects, hiring companies specialized in this type of production with different models.

In the next step, Vuforia is used to create the image targets to be used in Unity, in this case, the QR Codes, to serve as the object’s display code. The ready-made images of Targets are now used as source codes when using the opening of the images.

With Unity configured and the Vuforia images ready, the APK is now built according to the desired standards. To confirm this, just build the project within Unity, which will generate an APK ready to be published on the Play Store Console.

Looking at the rising tendency of augmented reality development, it’s best to start using it for the right things like educational purposes. It can play an extraordinary role in trainings programs. Augmented reality has become, in recent years, a hot topic, despite still being little talked about it by the press in general. The evolution trend of this technology is visible and the result is surprising.