Report from 2018 AR Visioning Workshop

Blair MacIntyre -

A year ago, I took part in a workshop run by Greg Welch and Gurd Bruder, with funding from ONR (Office of Naval Research). The organizers just released a short report summarizing the results[1]), "Anticipating Widespread Augmented Reality: Insights from the 2018 AR Visioning Workshop." The preface summarizes the goals:

In August of 2018 a group of academic, government, and industry experts in the field of Augmented Reality gathered for four days to consider potential technological and societal issues and opportunities that could accompany a future where AR is pervasive in location and duration of use. This report is intended to summarize some of the most novel and potentially impactful insights and opportunities identified by the group.
Our target audience includes AR researchers, government leaders, and thought leaders in general. It is our intent to share some compelling technological and societal questions that we believe are unique to AR, and to engender new thinking about the potentially impactful synergies associated with the convergence of AR and some other conventionally distinct areas of research.

It's short and worth reading.  Here's a bit from the call-to-action at the end:

While there are a growing number of smartphone-based AR applications, today’s head- worn AR display systems are primarily targeted at researchers, developers, and perhaps ambitious consumers. This is notably limited when compared to the readily available and inexpensive consumer versions of Virtual Reality systems from Oculus (Rift) and HTC (Vive) for example. However, this appears to be changing, with Microsoft and others continuing to evolve their AR systems, making them more capable and robust, and consequently increasing consumer interest. Now is the time to explore questions and challenges, while the technology is developing, policies are undefined, and widespread adaptation of AR is in the future.

With Hololens2 coming out this fall, the next few years are going to be quite an exciting time for AR research!

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