Augmented Reality - a new approach that is shaping the future of design

Augmented reality is an exciting new concept that is just beginning to come on stream. Often associated with helping to facilitate the use of mobile technology in design, it is effectively a means of merging a live view of the real world with relevant computer generated information in real time.

This is typically made possible by inserting a marker into a scene, viewing the scene with a video camera and using computer software to replace the marker with an image of the model. As the marker is moved, the computer model is correspondingly moved too, and the streaming video is updated.

Although it remains in the development phase, augmented reality offers the potential to streamline the whole design process by enabling, for example, an engineer with an iPhone camera to first capture the image of a specific boiler while on site, identify it using GPS technology and then overlay virtual, digitally generated images of piping.

Equally, an onsite engineer using an iPad could potentially link underground pipes with map location information from the Internet to pinpoint their location and display it visually to project stakeholders. Effectively, an augmented layer of relevant information has been added to a real object, streamlining the whole design process and speeding up informed decision-making.

The technology is already being integrated into plug-ins for Autodesk 3dsMax. In the future it is likely to become part of the mainstream architectural and manufacturing design process with applications for 3D mechanical design software solutions like Autodesk Inventor a distinct possibility.

In the future, the ability of augmented reality to deliver this kind of accelerated communication is likely to be key in helping to drive competitive edge for design and engineering companies across a range of industry sectors. It is, however, not just about speed of communication, it is just as much about quality and efficiency.

Augmented reality delivers benefits in this context also by taking advantage of the latest technology – iPads and iPhones, for example – to streamline the whole communications workflow – cutting the need for paper-based manual processes, leading, in turn, to fewer errors and helping to reduce the requirement to carry out time-consuming and costly reworks.

Indeed, the ease of use of augmented reality will be critical in making design technology more mobile. It will do this both by redefining the mobile user experience and by making the mobile search function effectively invisible to the user, while simultaneously reducing the search effort required.

The technology improves the usability of mobile devices in a design context by using a technique known as direct manipulation, enabling the user to manoeuvre objects presented to them using actions that correspond at least loosely to the real world. This effectively means that augmented reality acts as the user interface itself. Space, people and objects are ‘sensed’ by the mobile device, giving the design user location-based or context-sensitive information on the fly.

The inituitive nature of the approach means that it is easy for users who are not familiar with 3D technology to navigate the 3D space with confidence.

Intensive research is going on in this area at the moment. The technology is already working. In fact, it has been around for many years. What is different today is that as computer processing speeds have rapidly increased in recent times; it is now possible to run augmented reality over standard off-the-shelf hardware which makes the technology far more commercially viable.

In the future, given the scope of its potential benefits, augmented reality may well become an integrated application within many leading design solutions, including - perhaps - Autodesk Inventor, where it might have applications in the manufacturing and construction sectors, for example, as well as potentially for training and support.

The lines between the real and virtual worlds of design are increasingly blurring. To quote Autodesk’s chief technology officer, Jeff Kowalski, speaking at the annual Autodesk University conference in December 2009. “In the future, your real world will be much more virtual, your virtual world will be much more real, and the future is coming faster than you think.” And with augmented reality now ready to take its commercial bow, the design future may be here even quicker than Kowalski anticipated.