Actual reality can be confusing and overwhelming, and that’s why we oftentimes turn to the Internet for help. IBM is taking that to a new level with an AR mobile shopping app. The example given is when you’re cruising down the cereal aisle and you don’t know which one you want to buy.

When you take out your smartphone or tablet and launch the yet unnamed IBM shopping assistant app, it uses the camera to recognize the different products on the shelf. Then, the app will “instantly display recommendations and offers based on their specific preferences.” The demo here, for instance, shows that one of the cereals is “low in sugar” and that you get a half-gallon of milk for free when you buy this box of cereal.

The superimposed information that pops up in the app is hardly random either. It’s supposed to tap into your buying history, as well as looking at things like price, consumer rating, and environmentally friendly packaging. You can pre-set the characteristics that are important to you and then you can use the app to pan across a shelf of products. The app will then highlight the item that best matches your preferences.

“The idea of standing in an aisle in the supermarket and having your mobile device point out the gluten-free cookies you need can be a real time saver,” said project leader Amnon Ribak. “This has the potential to completely change the shopping experience from one of hunting, reading, and searching to simply picking up those products you prefer.”

I imagine the future of this could be integration with Google’s Project Glass.

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Wouldn’t it be convenient if you could just look up at the sky and you’d instantly see the weather report? Wouldn’t it be nice if you could get walking directions overlaid with what you’re really seeing? All this and more will be possible thanks to Google’s Project Glass.

It’s like taking Google Goggles to a whole new level, providing users with an augmented reality experience via a pair of wearable transparent glasses. Yes, it’s just a concept right now, but the video below demonstrates that Google is very much taking this seriously and it in the works. You can use it to make phone calls, send messages, check your calendar, and so much more.

A group of us from Google[x] started Project Glass to build this kind of technology, one that helps you explore and share your world, putting you back in the moment. We’re sharing this information now because we want to start a conversation and learn from your valuable input. So we took a few design photos to show what this technology could look like and created a video to demonstrate what it might enable you to do.

I’m still not entirely sure how Google will go about executing this. The user seems to be using a series of voice commands in the video, but how do the glasses know what icons to bring up under what circumstances? You’d also have to assume that the glasses are connected to the Internet in some way, though they could be tethering or connected to a smartphone. For better or worse, this is the future of communication. At least you don’t have to worry about people glancing down at their phones to check their messages during a meal; they’ll do it while staring at you right in the face.

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We have seen it in many spy movies, but there’s a possibility that you might play with one sometime in the near future. At this year’s CES, we saw the Lumus transparent wearable AR display and the company revealed a new optical engine at the Mobile World Congress. The Lumus OE-31 see-through wearable display can be integrated in regular glasses. As you can see above, the eyewear in the picture comes with an embedded MP3 player; the OE-31 is on its left side.

As you might know, Google is also reportedly developing something similar. Their AR glasses will provide you with information as you gaze upon the world. But, while that design is said to involve an opaque display over one eye, the Lumus OE-31 will add an image layer (with nHD resolution) on top of what you see through the glasses.

The possibilities for the new technology are certainly endless. For example, athletes can use eyewear with OE-31 for getting info such as speed, lap time, and heart rate while jogging or biking. Or you will be able to connect it with a smartphone and, using GPS, see the directions to a place on the display while you are walking on the road.

Of course, a lot of developers will be needed to bring out interesting applications. But we are not quite sure whether it will be fun to have a display in front of our eyes like this; we will be taking a closer look at this in the very near future to see how it’s like. In the meantime, you can take a peek at the clips below to see what the OE-31 has to offer.

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This is an awesome idea, but I can never imagine it seeing the light of day as a commercial release. Basically, Garnet Hertz of the University of California Irvine has cobbled together what looks like a Sega OutRun cabinet from the 80s, except it’s a real functional vehicle that can really drive around on the road using augmented reality.

The cabinet is outfitted with a series of cameras and then the computer algorithm interprets the road that it sees in front of it, rendering that with the same 8-bit gaming graphics as the classic racing game. If there’s a right turn coming up on the golf cart path, you’ll see a right turn in the game in real time. You also still get the pretty blonde in your virtual passenger seat.

The trouble, of course, is that this is way too dangerous. You don’t actually see anything in front of you. You could just as easily run over young children or bumble your way straight into a lamp post. To be fair, the max speed is a mere 13mph, but that doesn’t really mean that it’s all that safe. In the demo video below, you can even see Hertz constantly peering around the cabinet to see the obstacles ahead.

Cool idea, though. I’ll give him credit for that. I’m sure it costs more than a roll of quarters too.

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With the next iPad, it’s reasonable to expect a higher resolution screen and a more powerful processor, but it’s possible that we could be getting a hefty dose of augmented reality when it comes to the next-gen tablet too. Apple recently filed a few patents and they seem to outline at least two interesting propositions.

Let’s start on the lower end of the spectrum. In this instance, the iPad display would be split in half. The top half is a live video as being shown by the back camera on the iOS tablet. The bottom half, however, is a 3D representation of what you see, updating in real time, highlighting recognized objects. Your location and orientation would be based on GPS, WiFi, cell tower ID, as well as motion sensors. In this way, it works kind of like Sky Map for Android, but for buildings and such.

But that’s a split-screen. Where the patents start to get more interesting is in the implementation of multiple displays layered on top of one another, some of which can be transparent at times. This would overlay the AR information onto the main screen, which I think works a lot better. In both instances, there could also be a “share” button so you can share your AR viewpoint with another iOS buddy. You can also place a virtual pushpin off in the AR 3D distance and the app would tell you how to get there.

And Apple might take it even further too with fully transparent displays. Samsung has already demonstrated this, but Apple would likely polish it up. A possibility would be replacing (or overlaying) windows in a tour bus with these transparent displays, providing an AR viewpoint for the travelers as they pass points of interest.

Alas, these are just patents. Apple files tons of them and most never make it to production in any form. That said, wouldn’t you want to see some crazy clear AR action on your iPad 6?

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