Half a year ago somebody showed me something what`s called Augmented Reality. And last week I saw a video of a very useful application, a video from www.Layer.eu; a company specialized in augmented reality (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b64_16K2e08). Another video is a presentation from Pettie Maes at TED (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ-VjUKAsao); this video asked some time to see but gives you some insight and some background information on AR. And also a good view at the possibilities of AR in the near future.

The question that comes up in my mind is: “How can we test augmented reality?” Because if this will be a big part of the use of applications and techniques in the future, we have to be a participant of this. We think the testing approach has some traditional testing activities and also some fieldwork. In the next few blog`s we want to explain our vision of testing Augmented Reality. The first blog is an short introduction what we`ll use in the other blogs.

First of all in this blog some extra information around this topic. The question is, is augmented reality really different from the traditional applications or can we use the traditional test techniques. I think we must go in dept.

Augmented reality is a kind of a virtual layer over the real world.
(Or the more complex definition from the crowd http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augmented_reality) What you see is a combination of modern techniques what creates the virtual layer and this is presented over the real world. The borders blur at this moment between both. Imagine how many fascinating applications you can create for education, military, advertisement, fun and emergency trainings.

To create this we need a several things. We need:

• A kind of a projection of the virtual layer over the real world. This can be done by using a display of a mobile phone and show them over each other. You can use something like a beamer to project it in real-time. Or a kind of glasses which have the same features as the display of a mobile phone except you`re wearing and using it as normal glasses.
• A camera to receive the real world. This can had two functions. One of them is to recognize where you are. The other function is; to be able to project or display the real world on your display.
• The third part is a kind of a GPS tracker and compass to determine where you are and what your position is at that place
• A mobile computer (nowadays a phone with Google Android or IPhone has enough CPU to process some applications)
• The application himself.

Pattie Maes said in her presentation at TED (see hyperlink above) that in a couple of years we will have a device which contains the needed functionality and with a size not bigger than our mobile phone costs: less than 350 dollar.

Some parts we can test with traditional techniques and for some of them we need to define new ones.

1. Maria Says:
   June 24th, 2009 at 01:19

   Pretty cool post. I just found your blog and wanted to say
   that I have really enjoyed reading your posts. Anyway
   I’ll be subscribing to your blog and I hope you post again soon!

2. How I Make $5000 a Month Posting Links on Google Says:
   June 26th, 2009 at 00:27

   Loved your latest post, by the way.

3. Marc Valkier Says:
   July 29th, 2009 at 09:09

   It is interesting to think about what needs to be tested with AR applications. What aspects are more, or less, important? How do you test it? etc.
   What would additionally interest me, is how you could use AR to help you test. What kind of tools can be developed, using AR technology, which will facilitate / improve your test process.

   An idea:
   I am think about a 3D presentation of persons that are stored in your test database. Presenting the group with certain charateristics, you could manually pick the persons you would need within your specific testset (move persons to a separate group by manually picking them up and putting them aside). Representing all persons within your testset using personal charateristics (like age, gender, height, eye colour) would help you to more quickly assemble your testset.

   But this is just an idea and I would be interested in other possibilities of using AR to improve testing.

4. Andreas Prins Says:
   July 31st, 2009 at 06:15

   Hi Marc,

   That`s a good idea, we can discuss how this will work, maybe we can do it in a kind of a pilot project.