How is AR Technology transforming Drones and their applications?
Those days are gone when augmented reality technology was only related to a medium of recreation and entertainment. However, it is just not limited to that. If you are not living under the rock, you would already know the potential of augmented reality and drones. But what if they are combined? Well. Here is a comprehensive post that will give you insight into how AR technology can improve drones.
What are drones?
Let’s begin with the basics — drones are just any unpiloted aircraft in the simplest terms. They are also commonly referred to as “Unmanned Aerial Vehicles” (UAVs) due to the hardware and technology.
Drones carry out a wide range of activities starting from essential package deliveries to a military operation. Drones might be as small as the size of your palm or even the size of an aircraft.
Drone technology is improving at quite a rapid pace over the years. Thus, the possibilities here are limitless. According to the report by CBInsights, there are about 21 industries that are currently leveraging the power of drone technology for their needs, and the count is gradually increasing.
What is Augmented reality technology?
Augmented Reality technology is a unique advancement designed to offer you a real-life experience through your digital screens. AR projects digital graphics over physical objects to provide an interactive viewing experience. It focuses on bringing the visual, auditory and sensory information in real-time. This technology is widely employed in several industries, including entertainment, education, medical sciences, automotive, and more.
Will AR technology improve drones?
Flying drones is not the easiest thing to do. Keeping practical instances in consideration, firstly, flying drones is quite a hassle, and you can’t carry out the main activities simultaneously. Flying drones requires users to have firm control over the remote that controls the complete operations.
Incorporating AR technology into drones can make a significant change in mobility and situational awareness.
Ar glasses are highly prevalent in high-end video games. Bringing the same technology here can make a tremendous change in the overall situational awareness. Using AR glasses and flying a drone will keep the hands free and the mind entirely focused on the situation. You can directly experience the live view of the drone’s feed within the AR glasses, which makes the complete process simpler and quicker.
It is instrumental in fire departments or even while driving. You can identify the roads from an aerial view, similar to Google Satellite maps that we readily rely on daily to find our routes.
The best Augmented Reality companies also involve their incredible technology into drones and use them for aerial inspections for various military, protection, and even daily patrolling.Thus, the combination of AR and drones is a revolutionary step.
How are drones used with AR technology?
Here are some crucial examples of how various industries are using Augmented reality drones to improve their operations and offer a seamless customer experience:
Maps
We all know the damage recovery process should be the quickest for relief during disasters. Like the example we stated about Google Maps, one of the typical augmented reality applications should determine the site of a disaster for quicker and precise responses. The augmented reality drones help identify damage and disasters and carry out territory inspection and research to understand the gravity and the ground reality of the situation. Most AR companies integrate particular images and sound layers into the native drone software through different APIs.
Real estate
Many real estate companies currently use AR technology for visualizing and showcasing the new buildings and the nearby areas for analysing the environment. These augmented reality applications improve project visualization.
It provides an interactive virtual tour of the entire location and its properties while covering the area with a few minutes of flight. AR construction drones also help the contractors, builders and architects a better insight and help plan the strategy before creating the structure.
Apart from that, you can also use these augmented reality drones for capturing the view of the locality and site. With this data, you can create a 3D structure by overlapping the actual scene with the angle and distance viewed with the drones.
Inspection
Many companies use drones and augmented reality to introspect their aircraft by taking photos or live video. It will help determine the discrepancies in living and real-time to come to the correct conclusions regarding the required modifications. It eventually saves a lot of time, efforts and resources. With AR-based drone inspection, the ground operations are much faster to complete in a shorter turnaround time.
Games
There are countless games currently loved by gamers that include both drones and Augmented reality, such as the Spin Master, which has won several awards worldwide. There could be various concepts in these games, such as the gamer pilots who fly the drones over a particular mat use different visual and spatial tracking.
It creates a 3D augmented reality site for the gamer. Players can view their drone flying in the virtual 3D world right in front of their screens which is super fun! They can effectively complete their missions, and the entire gaming session becomes much more enthralling!
Final Thoughts
AR technology has great potential in the building and streamlining various processes in different industries due to its simple user experience. And when combined with drones, it opens a wide range of possibilities. Even though the integration of Augmented reality is just limited to very few drones, the count is gradually increasing as more and more industries are finally realizing and acknowledging the capabilities and potential of this technology.
This modern advancement also opens room for great customization as per the requirements of various industries, which might not have been possible before. Thus, this combination holds a massive potential to solve several complex challenges without excessive human intervention. In the upcoming time, we will see more advancements of this powerful integration. It will for sure make our lives easier, productive and safer.
