AR Summit: Qualcomm on using AR as an interactive medium

Michael Gervautz talks augmented reality at London conference.

Qualcomm's business development director Michael Gervautz told the AR Summit today that augmented reality should be seen as an interactive medium to add value to what people are doing in the real world.

He talked about definitions of AR - virtual 2D and 3D imagery superimposed onto a view of the real world. But he stressed that there are two separate technologies at work here: AR based on GPS and compass sensors based on knowing where the user is and what direction they're looking in, and 'vision-based' AR based on recognising objects in the real world (where location is not a component).

"The technical challenge behind vision-based AR is we need to scan each image that comes in from the video camera, compare it with the database of images that might be known, try to find out the relative position of the camera to these objects, and then render the content on top of it. And we need to do this at 30 frames per second," he said. Which is where Qualcomm decided it could be useful by getting involved through supporting AR in its hardware and software.

So, Qualcomm is focused more on 'near field usage environments' - objects on tables or floors, walls and retail shelves. Gervautz said that the company sees a number of uses for AR beyond gimmicks, starting with gaming and playful content. When it first asked developers to use its API, 80% of the projects were games, apparently.

"Media and advertising is another market that we believe is a very strong one," he said. "And another field that I believe is strong but needs some time to take off is the whole case of instructional how-to applications." For example: furniture assembly. In the future, Gervautz thinks social networking, visual search and navigation/discovery will also have potential for vision-based AR - in the latter case, this would be in combination with sensor-based AR.