Augmented Reality (AR) has recently found a way to enhance the business, health, military and education industries. Unlike Virtual Reality (VR), which immerses us completely in a virtual world, AR integrates virtual objects in our surroundings by superimposing digital images and animations to the real world, and we need only our smartphones to interact with those objects. Maybe our first experience with AR was scanning printed QR codes, hunting pokemons on Pokemon Go, or using Facebook or Snapchat filters and it sure does feel like magic! Although an AR app is purely technical (maybe a better term), its objective in creating a surreal world without losing sense of the real world justifies our feeling in the magic of it all. That effect has not been lost on the business world. 

AR is already changing the face of retail business as it offers customers a new way to interact with products and services, whether it be an in-store or out-of-store experience. IKEA app allows you to browse their catalogue all the while checking if that sofa would fit in the living room. AR in retail is pushing the customer to engage which helps the brand retain his attention for a longer time. 

Augmented Reality (AR) in Marketing, Industry & IoT

It is no wonder that AR is a gold mine for marketing and advertising, particularly due to the attention retention, which has been as low as 30 seconds in the past years. Retail rely heavily on marketing to offer the customer a unique buying experience. And with the battle of the brands in the traditional marketing, augmented reality applications seems to open a new and broader horizon where content and experience can be unique and personalized. 

In the industrial environment, AR can be used internally to train employees or improve on products through remote collaborations in real time. It provides an immersive training for technicians which leads to improved performance. AR is very useful when comes to designing and modelling products, using Augment’s plugin, designers visualize product mockups at scale via tablets. Rather than creating costly prototypes.

Above all, for industrial IoT (Internet of Things), AR’s most beneficial use case may be remote monitoring and maintenance. his provides a basis upon which many companies are building machine learning and predictive analytics. One of the most powerful features of this new technology is being able to predict failures ahead of time, helping customers best use their products. Manufacturers can also use this technology to find service opportunities that would go unnoticed internally or by third-parties.

AR is proving to be more appealing than VR to businesses, as its ubiquity finds its application in everyday life. We are still in the first stages of AR technology, but imagine the potential that’s just been unlocked. Remember when Google first launched its Google Glass and they remained so futuristic for some years? Well we are in the time when they seem just right. 

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