AUGMENTED REALITY

 

AUGMENTED REALITY

Augmented Reality (AR) can motivate and engage students by presenting them with an immersive experience by using multiple forms. AR is a technique that provides a combination of the real and virtual world. AR is defined as a system that generates a combined viewpoint for the user that is the blend of the actual scene viewed by the viewer and virtual scene made by a computer along with supplementary information.

AR aims to boost and improve our perception of surroundings by mixing computing, sensing and display technologies. AR holds the pledge of making automatic, direct and actionable links among the electronic information and physical world. AR can bring more interactivity which raises attention, motivation and enhance the learning experience of students. Normally accepted description of AR as technology has few key features which include: blend of the real and virtual world, interaction in a real environment and 3D registration.

 AR is an emerging technology in which an unreal or imaginary world overlays the real world for better user/learner interaction. AR technology intervenes in the real and virtual environments to produce distinct learning effects. According to Milgram and Kishino (1994), AR technology intermediates the real and the virtual worlds. VR is an immersive technology and it interacts with the computer-generated graphics only but in AR, the user can interact with both the worlds together, viz. the computer-generated, and the real world. The combination of AR with educational learning provides a more interactive environment for teachers and students and increases their engagement. According to Azuma, AR is a bridge between real and imaginary environments. In real-time, computer generated virtual images make the real environment more impressive and interactive.

Meaning and Definition of AR

Augmented reality technology has its roots in the field of computer science interface research. Many of the basic concepts of AR have been used in movies and science fiction at least as far back as movies like the terminator (1984) and RoboCop (1987). These movies feature cyborg characters whose views of the physical world are augmented by a steady stream of annotation and graphical overlays in their vision systems.

The term ”augmented reality” was first coined by researcher Tom Caudell, at Boeing in 1990, who was asked to improve the expensive diagrams and marking devices used to guide workers on the factory floor. He proposed replacing the large plywood boards, which contained individually designed wiring instructions for each plane, with a head mounted apparatus that displays a plane’s specific schematics through high-tech eye ware and project them onto multipurpose, reusable boards.