Homework 7

For this assignment, we had to download an augmented reality application that could place virtual furniture into real spaces. I used the suggested application, IKEA Place, for this write-up. This app allows you to browse IKEA's catalog of home furniture and place anything you want into your living space in order to see how different pieces would look. I think this is a fantastic idea, and one I had thought of in past, but I didn't think the technology was ready enough to implement it effectively. Therefore, I was pretty skeptical going in, but it ended up far exceeding my expectations.

One of the most common issues I've seen with AR apps like this is recognizing depth of field in a photo. This is usually due to poor lighting conditions, but upon testing, this wasn't an issue at all. The chair in my room seemed exactly to scale, and maintained the proper position even while moving around it with the camera. Next, I walked outside and places a large bed frame on my front lawn. The scale of it was much larger, requiring me to move further around the space to get a full picture of it. My only issue with the application was the difficulty I had just trying to move the objects around once they were placed into the space.

I think applications of AR like this are incredibly like to become commonplace in only a matter of years, if not months. In the same vein as this, I have seen ideas of shopping for clothing using augmented reality to place the clothing onto a person. These implementations of AR in the interior decoration and design fields are only the beginning of what augmented reality is capable of innovating in. Augmented reality is only being held back by the applications of its technology, and applications like these are, in my opinion, are a great help to furthering AR's adoption in modern society.