When was augmented reality invented?

http://www.vrs.org.uk/augmented-reality/invention.html

When was augmented reality invented?

The history of augmented reality can be traced back to 1990 and work undertaken by Professor Tom Caudell as part of a neural systems project at Boeing. This project was focused upon finding new ways to help the company’s engineering process and involved the use of virtual reality.

 Caudell developed software which displayed the position of important cabling during construction which removed the need for complex user manuals.

This was the first example of augmented reality.

Caudell opened up the gates for further augmented reality work which occurred in 1992. This included work undertaken by L.B. Rosenberg on a user directed system for the US air force. And an augmented reality manual for using a printer which enabled people to load paper into the printer and perform other tasks without having to use a manual. This was produced by Blair MacIntyre, Stephen Feiner and Doree Seligmann.

Augmented reality remained firmly in the research and scientific worlds until the end of the 1990’s when Hirokazu Kato released an AR toolkit which contains a tracking system, camera calibration code and source code. This is designed to be used with a headset and different operating systems, e.g. Linux, Mac, and Windows etc. It enables 3D images to be displayed onto the real world.

Augmented reality is used in gaming but this is too big an article to discuss here. More information can be found in our augmented reality games article.