Two often cited technological precursors to augmented reality were the Sensorama, developed by Morton Heilig in 1957, and the Sword Of Damocles, a headset developed by Ivan Sutherland in 1968.
Another notable precursor to AR was Videoplace, by Myron Kruger.
The 90s was the first decade to see significant progress in AR. The term augmented reality was coined by Boeing employee Tom Caudell at the beginning of the decade. During the 1990s, considerable research was going on in areas of computation and technology exploring how we could augment our lives: the office of the future, interfacing with colleagues over distances, intuitive manipulation of data in immersive setting, to name a few.
In general, the last decade of the 20th century saw augmented reality as a specific concept and collection of technologies take shape. Advancements in computing, displays, and algorithms of computer vision helped realize a future that augments what we experience in the world by placing context sensitive virtual objects directly in our world.
Then, in 2016, Pokemon Go was released. Pokemon Go was a significant cultural event, introducing millions to augmented reality.
The primary technologies behind Pokemon Go, geo-location and pass through AR, had existed for awhile. What made Pokemon Go possible was a massive database that mapped streets, bodies of water, buildings (data from Google Maps), and points of interest (mined from Niantic's previous game Ingress). This database and of course an internationally beloved franchise. For a further exploreation of AR and massive databases, this article is an interesting read..
It is important to recognize the history outlined here is based on augmented reality's history in research and academia, which is heavily influenced by a technology oriented perspective.
Instead of grounding AR in technology, if we conceptualize AR as a medium distinct from any specific technology or digital media, our history expands. One important goal of this website and the larger project is the exploration and discussion of this larger history and conceptualization of AR.
Augmentation of reality by computer-generated perceptual information, ideally across multiple sensory modalities, with the overall sensory information “registered” such that it is perceived as part of the environment.
This is a pretty dense definition, however, unpacking it by focusing on three key terms gives us most of the information needed to think about augmented reality.
Augment: to make larger; enlarge in size, number, strength, or extent;
Augmenting reality is adding to or expanding reality. We can think of it as additional information, overlaid on top of the information our senses receive from the world.
The additional information can be additive or subtractive towards sensory modalities.
Sensory modalities such as: sight, sound, taste, smell, tactile, haptic, and proprioception
Our sensory modalities are how we receive input about the world, from which we construct a model of the world including our embodied being in it.
Examples of sensory modality simulation:
In the context of AR, to be “registered” is to be perceived as part of the environment. If I perceive myself to be in the world, I also perceive the “registered” object to be in the world as well.
Two examples of registration: