Augmented Reality – Active Lab mirror

The Active Lab mirror overlays clothing onto your body giving a 360-degree 3D representation of the pieces you choose. You can select from a catalogue of clothes using gesture recognition, giving you the most realistic digital fashion experience of your life and saving countless minutes getting all hot and sweaty pulling sweaters over your head in tiny cubicles. Apparently women spend almost a year of their life choosing what to wear. I’m not quite sure this would speed that process up or give me such a wealth of clothing options to choose from that I’d spend more time in front of the mirror…

And while we’re talking #AR (augmented reality), I attended a talk last night at The Bakery in London where I saw two presentations on that very topic. The first was by Ben Stevenson of Halocline in which he discussed entertainment’s role in preparing society for things like Google Glass and in effect, hastening their arrival. He cited many notable films such as the 1988 John Carpenter film ‘They Live’ which I had never heard of but the French guy who was a little older than had which made me feel young and pleased. The clip he showed us was poignant – can’t wait till Google Glass starts showing adverts like these.

The second talk was by the Director of Kudan AR – Tom Wood who showed off some pretty impressive iPad / iPhone apps. He had the audience competing over who’s iOS was best (by popularity in the room) and presented to us how we’ll be able to view products in their habitat at our homes before we buy them (think seeing how a car will look in your garage or how a sofa will fit into your living room) and finally how we’ll be interacting with products in the (very very near) future – watch the crappy I video took of part of his demonstration below (I have to learn how to hold my phone on its side) as Tom holds up different boxes of cereal and interacts with them by creating and mixing some MIDI beats.

Impressive stuff to be sure and many questions were raised on the point of using AR for other uses – like quick diagnosis of cancer from moles (this is real in Australia). What uses of AR have you seen recently that you think will catch on?