The Baton Rouge Area Chamber discussed the role of augmented reality in today’s business world at a monthly luncheon Tuesday, explaining how marketing can change with interactive digital media.
Augmented reality features are available as mobile applications that allow users to find what’s around them by different “points of interest,” using location-based services and pointing the phone’s camera to the desired location. These can include restaurants, bars, hotels and various other venues. Any phone with a camera and GPS capabilities is capable of using the software to run augmented reality apps, said guest speaker and Interactive Creative Director with Zehnder Communications Rob Hudak.
Zehnder Communications designed an app for Visit Baton Rouge that utilizes augmented reality, allowing users to open the app and search for various restaurants or events happening nearby by pointing the phone’s camera in the desired direction. Additional information about nearby points of interest can also be found, including menus, phone numbers and directions.
Hudak spoke about the different apps he and his company have worked on using augmented reality, which range from an app for Cirque du Soleil to the recent movie “Battle: Los Angeles.” Hudak described the technology as “not virtual reality,” but taking the real world and adding a “human element to all of this.”
Zehnder Communications and Hudak are working to continually develop technologies surrounding augmented reality to increase user access on smartphones and tablets while making “cities easier to use.”
Associate Director of University Employment Services/Career Services Trey Truitt visited the luncheon to hear about the various new business ideas flowing through Baton Rouge.
“The presentation was great,” Truitt said.
An application for students utilizing this technology would be helpful, he said, in such ways as enabling new students to easily find classrooms or offices across campus.
Truitt said utilizing this technology for athletic events would be an asset that could point users to the nearest happening.
Augmented reality programs extend beyond mobile apps, Hudak said, and programs have the potential to benefit students.
“We’ve barely scratched the surface,” he said.
Hudak said the future is bright for augmented reality programs, and he has hopes, for instance, of medical students utilizing the technology to enhance learning.
“We’ve barely scratched the surface.”
