Other meanings of Augmented reality
Computing and human–computer interaction
Augmented reality is technology overlaying digital information onto the real world. It combines a user’s view of physical surroundings with computer-generated text, images, sound, or three-dimensional objects that are positioned to appear related to those surroundings. Unlike virtual reality, which replaces the environment with a simulated one, augmented reality preserves the physical world as the primary setting.1
Augmented reality depends on combining digital content with a live view of the physical environment. A conventional system must generally perform three tasks: sense the surroundings, determine the user’s position and orientation, and render content from a matching viewpoint. Ronald Azuma’s influential survey characterized augmented reality by combining real and virtual elements, operating interactively in real time, and aligning virtual objects in three dimensions.2
Registration is the alignment between a digital object and the physical feature it is meant to accompany. Cameras, inertial sensors, depth sensors, satellite positioning, and computer-vision techniques can contribute to it. When registration drifts, an arrow may appear detached from a doorway or a virtual machine may seem to slide across a workbench. The quality of this alignment, rather than visual novelty alone, often determines whether an application is useful.
Augmented reality is delivered through phones, tablets, head-up displays, and see-through headsets. Mobile devices use their cameras and motion sensors to place graphics on a screen showing the world; optical see-through glasses project light into the user’s view; video see-through headsets capture the environment and display a processed version of it. Each approach involves trade-offs among field of view, brightness, latency, weight, battery life, and privacy.
Interaction may involve touch, gaze, hand tracking, speech, controllers, or physical movement. The display must update quickly enough to reduce apparent lag, while tracking must remain stable as lighting, surfaces, and occlusion change. Modern development platforms such as ARKit and ARCore provide standardized capabilities for plane detection, motion tracking, and environmental understanding, lowering the barrier to experimentation.34
Augmented reality is used for navigation, industrial maintenance, design review, education, medicine, training, retail visualization, and entertainment. A technician can receive contextual instructions beside equipment, while a surgeon or medical trainee may view anatomical or procedural information alongside a patient or mannequin. In design and architecture, full-scale digital models can be inspected in the intended space before construction. Reviews of the field nevertheless find that successful applications depend on task design, user training, and evaluation rather than on adding overlays indiscriminately.5
Important limitations include visual clutter, inaccurate tracking, narrow fields of view, discomfort, distraction, and the difficulty of showing information without obscuring hazards. Persistent cameras and spatial maps also raise questions about consent, data security, workplace surveillance, and the recording of bystanders. Accessibility is uneven: headsets may be heavy, visual overlays may not suit users with impaired depth perception, and voice or gesture interfaces may fail in noisy or crowded settings.
The field’s early history predates today’s consumer applications. In 1968, Ivan Sutherland and colleagues demonstrated a head-mounted display that presented simple computer-generated graphics registered to the user’s head position; its mechanical support gave it the nickname “Sword of Damocles.”6 The term augmented reality became associated with work at Boeing in the early 1990s, where researchers investigated overlays to support aircraft manufacturing tasks.2
Not every overlay needs a headset: projection mapping, spatial audio, windshield displays, and screen-based camera applications also fit broader definitions of augmented reality. A related edge case is mediated reality, in which systems may remove, filter, or alter parts of the visual scene rather than simply add information. Research also examines collaborative AR, where several people share registered virtual objects, and perceptual issues such as occlusion, depth cues, vergence–accommodation conflict, and cybersickness.1
The boundaries between augmented reality, mixed reality, and spatial computing vary across technical, commercial, and academic usage.
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