A common tool in SciFi movies, Augmented Reality is presented as an ideal way for interacting with some types of information. The film "Iron Man", for example, presents a Human Machine Interface that seems to open up possibilities for designers and researchers that were never possible before (and are still not possible to that degree). The film "Minority Report" presents a Human Machine Interface for dealing with large quantities of visual data (which is Science Fact)
Target Acquisition Systems for fighter jest and helicopters have been around for years. In recent years, some developments in integrating Augmented Reality into infantry-scale arms have been added to the market. One example is the EOTech Holographic Weapons System
The sight uses a combination of a laser and a holographic reflective film to form the visible dot or circle in infinite space over the target. In practice it has been said to provide faster target acquisition.
Sophisticated targeting systems have been around for a while. Systems such as VTAS, which allow aiming via a head mounted display, but even older systems that used head up displays.
With all that technology available for fighter jets, someone just had to come up with a way to squeeze that into a rifle size scope...
Meet DARPA's "One Shot" system. The system uses a laser to estimate distance and crosswind profile and shift the target cross-hairs to where it expects the bullet to actually hit.
And there's Tracking Point's cool technology for a 3-stage targeting system. First, tag a target in your scope, then the scope tracks the target. If you're unhappy with the tagged target, you clear the tag and tag the target again. When ready, just press the trigger and aim, and the targeting system takes care of releasing a shot when the rifle is aimed correctly.
Are Fully Autonomous Cars the wave of the future? We've seen them in many Sci-Fi films and show, from KITT in the Knight Rider TV show
Total Recall (1990) with the robot Taxi driver
Minority Report
And let's not forget this Audi beauty from I, Robot
But before we give up the driver's seat, there are some interesting advances in Augmented Reality that are available today as built-in features or add-ons in some car designs, or as apps for your phone.
For example, Audi Pre Sense that identifies emergency braking situations, following a vehicle too closely, etc.
Or the Pre Collision System and Lane-Keep Assist features on the more affordable Toyota Prius
However, if you're not into buying a new car yet for any reason, you might want to check out iOnRoad. The App is free to download for iPhone and Android phones.
A quote from Wikipedia: iOnRoad is a free augmented reality driving safety app.[1] It received the International CES 2012 innovation award.[2][3][4] The program uses the GPS feature, gyroscope and video camera stream of the native mobile device to monitor a vehicle’s position on the road, alerting drivers of lane departures and potential collisions with audio and visual cues.[5][6] iOnRoad has been downloaded by over 500,000 people.
The application seems to use some nifty realtime image analysis on the video camera stream in combination with your GPS and accelerometers to determine the vehicle's speed.
The realtime stream processing is interesting and I'm quite impressed with its potential. I mean, cars on the road don't all look the same, and it takes quite a bit of an abstraction of the image in front of you to determine whether what you're looking at is a "car" versus other objects. And what about trucks of all sorts, or trailers that could be carried by cars or trucks, etc. Each of these may have very different "looks".
Some of the integrated safety systems (such as radar based ones) are also more impervious to varying weather conditions, and exposure sensitivity at night time.
However, as a start, it might be well worth it to at least try it out. If you buy the app with the windshield holder, the app will automatically detect that the phone is getting mounted on the windshield and would start monitoring. It can also work less intrusively in the background, so you only get to hear form it when you follow too closely. Watch though that you'd need to fiddle with it for a bit until you get your phone mounted at the right elevation and angle, because if the camera sees too much of the car hood, the app won't work.
In case you were wondering about 3D holographic maps...
Some of the technology is possible with today's technology and relies on persistance of vision (it was demonstrated successfully in 2006).
Since it provides only surface volumetric capabilities, it won't be able to show the Death Star under construction being shielded by a station on the surface of the planet as in the film.
A year later, there was an attempt to create a fully volumetric display using two rotation axises, called "ultra ORB", and an early demo presented, but I haven't found any indication that this project succeeded beyond that stage.
Not strictly Augmented Reality specific but close enough...
Anyone remember the DNA regeneration scene from the film "The Fifth Element" ?
In the film, some remains of a sole "survivor" are found (a heavily gloved hand)ת from which an apparently very complex DNA is extracted and used to regenerate the entire body.
At first the skeleton is printed (in a form similar to 3D printing), then the rest of the organic tissue is built on top of it, etc.
Well we might not be able to regenerate every organ yet, but the technology is already here in the form of biological 3D printing, to "print" specific organs.
Check out this talk by surgeon Antony Atala on "Printing a Human Kidney" on TED2011.
While we're on the topic of Sci-Fi reaching medicine... anyone who watched the Star Trek Next Generation series, probably saw one or more instances of this scene
