Handelsbranschers användning av Augmented reality
En studie om dess möjligheter, utveckling och användning
Augmented reality is an interesting technology which has increased in popularity the last couple of years. Even though we see more and more of this technology the use of it doesn?t match up to its true potential. This paper aims to investigate the possibilities of this technology and illustrate how companies can use it in their business to reach out to customers in a new and exciting way. The study consists of three parts. The first part explores what companies have done today with augmented reality, which companies are of interest for this technology and how they can use it. The second part investigates who the user of augmented reality is today and who tomorrow?s user will be. The third part goes through the technology behind augmented reality. This part investigates what is possible to do today and which techniques are the most common. These three steps are then combined and make the foundation of a prototype which will illustrate how a business can adopt augmented reality. Interviews of potential users reveal that these kinds of artifacts are needed by the public, for example, to visualizing products from the internet in the customers own home environment. Conclusions from the literature study and from the development of the prototype disclose that augmented reality have a lot of problems that needs to be solved before it will be accepted by a wider public audience. These problem areas range from camera quality to standardization of markers, but like all new technology these problems have solutions and eventually augmented reality will be a natural part of our lives.