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CES 2012: HP’s Autonomy shows possibilities of augmented reality

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Sports fans are familiar with the yellow first-down line that appears on the television screen while watching football games, but tech companies now want to bring augmented reality technology to everyday consumers.

Known as AR, augmented reality is a view of a physical, real-world environment that is altered by overlaying the image with digital photos, videos or text.

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At the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas on Sunday, Autonomy -- a tech company that was acquired by Hewlett-Packard last year -- was showing off its AR platform, Aurasma. Lauren Offers, director of marketing at Autonomy, held her business card in one hand and used her iPhone’s camera to point at the card with her other hand. On the screen of the iPhone, a video of the rep appeared in which she introduced herself. Later, Offers pointed her phone at a physical copy of GQ magazine; that issue’s articles and photos began appearing on the smartphone’s screen over the live image of the magazine’s cover.

With AR technology, a consumer simply uses a camera-equipped smartphone or tablet to point at an object to get information -- aim at a jar of pasta sauce, and recommendations for what kinds of wine to pair it with will appear over the real-life image of the jar; point to a house for sale, and information about its asking price, number of bedrooms and contact info will pop up on the screen.

Aurasma’s technology ‘allows smart devices to see, recognize and understand real-life images and objects in much the same way as the human brain does,’ the company said in a news release. ‘Aurasma then uses this fundamental understanding of the real world to seamlessly augment the scene with virtual content such as videos, animations and 3-D objects called ‘auras.’ No bar codes, visual tags or special glasses are required for Aurasma to work.’

Autonomy has already tagged thousands of buildings in London with AR technology. If you’re standing outside Buckingham Palace and point your smart device at it, for instance, dinosaurs will appear to come out of the building. The company has also tagged everyday items such as a $20 bill -- point your phone or tablet at the image of the White House on the back and its elements will come to life: the building appears to turn white, the little flag grows in size, the numbers wiggle and appear to float.

‘It’s changing the way we access information,’ said Tamara Roukaerts, head of marketing for Aurasma. ‘You blend off-line and online: this is the beginning of the outernet; it’s actually woven into the real world. And that’s how you want your information.’

In a recent Times article, my colleague Shan Li wrote that about 6 million AR apps were downloaded in 2010, according to ABI Research -- still a small fraction of the overall app market. But the number is projected to increase to 19 million downloads in 2011 and balloon to nearly a billion by 2016. The firm forecasts the mobile AR industry will see $3 billion in global revenue by 2016, up from $87 million this year and $21 million in 2010.

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More than 2 million users have downloaded Aurasma and Aurasma-enabled apps since its launch six months ago. The Aurasma app is available for free on the iPhone3GS, 4, 4S, iPad2 and Android devices.

Aurasma will be competing in the final of the CES Mobile Apps Showdown at the Wynn on Thursday.

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-- Andrea Chang in Las Vegas

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