The Transformative Impact of the AR Cloud

October 7, 2019 – Peter Diamandis concludes his look at the advances occurring in augmented reality (AR) with artificial intelligence (AI). In this posting which I have edited, Diamandis describes where the digital combines with the real world through AR/AI. Whether we are looking at the world of gaming, shopping, education, and tourism, AR/AI presents disruptive change that will allow humanity to do and experience things and activities we previously could only conceive in science fiction novels. The technological changes are coming in the form of software and hardware and the creation of a common cloud platform. The impacts will be felt everywhere. That’s what makes the emergence of this technology both fascinating and troubling. I’ll let Diamandis tell you more and hope to hear back from you with your questions and comments.

How do you want to see the world?

As an on-going game?

A constant shopping extravaganza?

A classroom that spans the planet and never stops teaching?

Or how Earth appeared 100 years ago?

Augmented Reality (AR) will allow everyone to view and experience all of the above.

Turn on Game mode, and as you walk down a street, everything you see will become part of a game… Star Wars, Pokémon or Harry Potter. Entertainment information layers will permeate your physical environment.

In Shopping mode, online will merge with the offline. Every storefront will show you the things you desire. Your personal AI will know exactly what you’re looking for, what you need, and what colors and fabrics you prefer. Specifications from designer labels, to price, color, and carbon footprint will be displayed by your AR visualization device based on preferences. Even the advertisements you will see or nor will be filtered by your AI.

Turn on Education mode, and wherever you look, your AR/AI headset will deliver to you the latest physics lessons, historical rundowns, or language translation. Virtual educators will appear on demand, to answer almost every question you ask. For every moment you will be exposed to constant learning and growth.

Or switch on Tourism mode, and explore any location accompanied by a personalized, expert guide. See a site as it appeared in any time period rewinding back 600 or even 6,000 years. And don’t miss any of the most renowned local food spots, particularly those your AR/AI knows will best match your palate preferences.

The AR Cloud

As AR hardware continues to mature this is the time for AR content creators to be building virtual universes or digitizing the physical one. For this to happen, however, a further step is required, a centralized AR Cloud to unify all headsets within a common synchronous virtual overlay. In the same way a search engine like Google services multiple operating systems and physical platforms, the AR Cloud will be the basic common denominator for access by every AR headset. Unlike today’s cloud computing infrastructure, however, the AR Cloud will churn out constant input-output loops in real-time, crunching and serving up far more data than we can currently comprehend.

While most AR apps available today offer one-time wonders like furniture try-outs or human anatomy lessons, AR-native apps linked to daily tasks in the physical world will change the way we do everything. States Ori Inbar, co-founder of Augmented World Expo, “A real-time 3D or spatial map of the world, the AR Cloud, will be the single most important software infrastructure in computing…With the AR Cloud, the entire world becomes a shared spatial screen, enabling multi-user engagement and collaboration.”

A common AR Cloud will also transform how information is organized. Currently, we actively input questions and find answers using two-dimensional mediums. But with the AR Cloud we will enable a smart environment to feed us what is relevant, when relevant. Local businesses pertinent to you and the problem with which you are dealing will auto-populate the data you receive through your AR interface. Individuals’ backgrounds will pop up at networking events, particularly for those who share your industry, interests, or conceivably possible partners for your next venture. By just gazing at the computing system or other device you’ve just received, your AR/AI interface will guide you through its assembly.

Technological Requirements

So how to build the AR Cloud. As I’ve mentioned in previous blogs in this series, the closest we have come to a widespread communal AR experience came with Pokémon Go. To function, the game servers stored geolocation, player activity, and specific location data. But even in the case of this sophisticated online-merge-offline AR experience, there was no shared memory of activities occurring at each location.

In a true AR Cloud, a centralized AR backend will incorporate shared memory data, allowing us both individual gamification and seamless shared experiences. To do so, the AR Cloud will require us to perfect point cloud capture, a method of capturing and reconstructing 3D areas. Using several technologies such as laser scanners like LiDAR, depth sensors like Kinect, or drone and satellite camera footage, we together will enable a universal, high-integrity point cloud.

A tremendous upcoming business challenge involves inputting scans from countless hardware devices and outputting data accessible to a range of platforms. The process will require the digitizing and updating of every square foot of physical space that your user-worn sensors can collect and turn into data. This will require solutions somewhat similar, but more sophisticated than Google Tango’s “area learning,” wherein devices use camera footage and location data to recognize places that have been seen before. Depth sensing and motion tracking will play a critical role in creating this hybrid digital/real-world environment.

And in terms of AR self-orientation, companies will need to develop universal localizers to give devices ultra-fast positional awareness. In this instance, crowdsourced 3D mesh stitching could be employed to stitch together all of the data generated by AR users to recreate digital versions of shared physical environments.

Finally, the AR Cloud will be supported by the connectivity revolution coming from 5G, and widespread global telecommunications delivered by a worldwide infrastructure that will make data delivery and sharing instantaneously.

The evidence that this is underway can be seen in work being done by network giants like Cisco, Microsoft, and IBM who are already creating the AR Cloud infrastructural components. Looking at Cisco as just one example, the company now innovates across various IoT platform solutions with its Cisco Kinetic, Cisco Jasper, and Cisco DNA (Digital Network Architecture) supporting the ever-increasing bandwidth needs of smart, connected devices. And then there is the non-profit Open AR Cloud (OARC) project which has been launched to make the AR Cloud an open standard, further democratizing the AR Cloud’s emergence.

What does it all mean?

Instant skills training means anyone capable of following decent audiovisual explanations will be capable of becoming an expert in almost anything, and it won’t matter whether you live in New York City or in rural Bangladesh to be engaged.

Screens go away which means your AR headset will mean the dematerializing of the devices you currently use to connect with the Internet. We’ve been on this path for sometime now when you consider how smartphones have dematerialized radios, calculators, cameras, measuring tapes, and almost every other computing tool into a single handheld device. But now even our smartphone will vanish as we will see through interfaces rather than look into them.

Control what you see will mean we eliminate what we don’t want to see and populate ordinary environments with the desired reality. Your office floor will become a calm pond if you desire it, and your windows will display a mountain view. Your children will be able to surround themselves with open canvases, how-it-works rundowns on any tool, or a written vocabulary as you speak to the cloud. Imagine telling your AI, “every time you see a coffee cup in the world, fill it with flowers.”

Never forget anyone’s name or birthday through the combination of facial recognition, AR and AI. You will immediately recognize a familiar face the moment you see one and get background information on how you know that person that is relevant at the time.

Instantly recognize anything when you look at it whether it is a tool, a piece of art, or a product. You will know exactly who made it, what it cost, what it does, how it might be assembled or disassembled, and its supply chain.

The advent of digital fashion will overlay digital garments on your body in the AR Cloud, and will create digital copies of you to model new styles or innovative fashion ideas at a whim. You will control who sees you in what clothing. Your colleagues will see you wearing one outfit, pedestrians another, and your family members a third.

Training your AI through your AR headwear will track where you’re looking, your facial expressions, eye dilation and focus, learning what you love, how you think, and what catches your imagination most.

Final Thoughts

Consider how companies, governments, artists and leaders will vie to present AR-delivered data to your visual cortex. Or ponder how you, or your AI, or both, will curate your digital world. How will you determine your privacy in the AR Cloud? What will you share? What will you not? This dileema is somewhat similar to what has occurred in the proliferation of social networking and the many applications where you may have a presence today. Only, this AR/AI convergence will be even more transformative and disruptive. Your AR/AI will become a powerful enabler for you. It will help you focus on what’s important, block out distractions, lift your moods when required, and help you to escape from time to time into a virtual space.

When will all this happen? The convergence of AR, gigabit/low-latency networks such as 5G, IoT-everywhere, AI and widespread adoption of blockchain will change almost every industry in the decade ahead. It will be an opportunity for more wealth creation than was possible in the past century.

Consider these two economic predictions to understand the magnitude of what is coming.

• McKinsey predicts that IoT will create $6.2 TRILLION of new economic value by 2025.
• Gartner predicts that AI augmentation will create $2.9 TRILLION in business value and 6.2 billion hours of worker productivity globally by 2021.

AR will play heavily in both of these productions. My advice to all of us…DON’T BLINK!