Augmented reality applications have gained a tremendous amount of hype over the past year or so. For those of you who don't know what these are, augmented reality is a term for applications that merge physical, real time elements with computer generated, virtual images. The concept is to take a basic application and enhance, or augment it, with context based information.A good example of an augmented reality application is the "Nearest Tube" application written for the iPhone. What the application does is help the user find the closest tube station in London. When the user holds the iPhone up, the application shows a video of what the user is looking at and then overlays all of the tube stations in that direction. It actually shows you not only the tube station name but also how far the station is from the user and what color line it is. The picture below is a snapshot from YouTube video that demonstrates the application.
This, like most of the augmented reality applications I have seen, is based on location information. I've seen other ones that show where restaurants are, tourist attractions, gas stations, traffic information, etc. Most are pretty cool although I did see one that shows where twitter feeds are coming from so I'm not sure what the practical application for that is.
So where does UC play into this? UC would add an extra dimension to these applications that would help personalize much of this information through the use of presence, identity or other information unique to user such as an address, frequent flier number, shopping preferences, etc. It could also help automate a process through the use of messaging or other communications.
Take for example, the first application. If it understood not only where the user was but also who the user is, the time of day and the user's destination, it would be able to highlight only the tube stop that was relevant to the user. So, if it's prior to, say, 9 a.m., that would mean the user was commuting from home to work and only that tube stop would be highlighted. If it's after work then the reverse would happen as the user makes his or her way home.
A corporate example of this could be a sales person in a downtown area that has some time to kill and wants to visit a customer. The sales person could hold the phone up and by pulling information from the corporate data base it could show where all the current clients for that company are located. Once those were identified, the sales person could select that company and get additional information like the last few calls between the organizations or, if intercompany presence sharing actually existed, all of the relevant users that were showing a presence status of "available" could be identified, helping the sales person target individuals that can be visited with. This could obviously be extended to showing the presence status of certain devices to help a repair person locate faulty equipment, etc. Additionally, by integrating these applications with a CEBP framework, the whole process could be automated, where a message is automatically sent to a mobile device when a certain condition is hit. When the message is opened up, the application would launch and show the user the augmented reality application with all of the relevant information.
Ultimately, it's this level of personalization and automation through the integration of unified communications that will bring the augmented reality applications into the corporate world. Finding tube stops and restaurants is cool and kind of fun, but this could really help streamline mobile corporate workers that are rushing around between meetings. The multimodal nature of UC will also help extend this past just video and bring in the element of email, messaging and voice communications creating an even better experience. If the user is driving then audio is probably better than video. If it's in a loud area like an airport, video or e-mail may be better.
I haven't seen much of this from the UC industry at all to date but like other markets, as consumers start to experience more of these augmented reality applications in their personal lives, they'll start to expect it in the corporate world. While I don't think we'll see demand for these tomorrow, I do think it's something the industry should keep an eye on.
