Augmented reality as a business tool

Although the adoption of augmented reality (AR) in the enterprise is still in its infancy, AR technology has matured to a point where organisations can use it as an internal tool to complement business processes, workflows and employee training, says a Gartner report, titled "Innovation Insight: Augmented Reality Will Become an Important Workplace Tool." The report says AR facilitates business innovation by enabling real-time decision making through virtual prototyping and visualisation of content. For example, the business potential for AR has increased through improvements in location services and image recognition. This greater accuracy allows businesses to use AR location features for vehicle, campus and in-building navigation and identification. Also image recognition capabilities in AR solutions can allow user organisations to use them in processes that require staff to visually identify objects and parts and for real-time decision making. For example, firefighters can use AR to find out ambient temperature or a building layout so they know exits, and potentially dangerous areas.

The report says increasing adoption of handheld devices will further boost adoption of AR over the next five years, making internal AR applications more widely available.