Augmented Reality Goes Postal

I never intended to turn this into an Augmented Reality blog, but there are so many creative ways people are starting to use this burgeoning technology. Many of them are experiments in artistic expression or marketing buzz, but some of them actually serve a practical purpose. In this case, printing out the United States Postal Service eagle icon and placing it in front of your webcam, allows you to see realistic, 3D virtual packages in actual-size. You can try it out for yourself in the Priority Mail Virtual Box Simulator.

Customers can choose from 4 different sizes (ranging from small to large) and then adjust the opacity of the box that appears using the Box Transparency slider. In the above picture I have chosen the Small Flat-Rate Box, which is supposed to be 8 and 5/8 inches long. It’s appears a little bit smaller than ‘actual size’, which you can tell because it isn’t as wide as the 8 and 1/2 inch paper I’m holding. It should actually be slightly wider than the paper.

What makes this truly useful, however, is the Persistent Box View which you can activate at the bottom left. Most augmented reality displays disappear when the target icon is covered. With the persistent view, the box will stay floating in mid-air when the eagle icon is removed, allowing a customer to hold up another item in its place. In this case I’m holding up a portable DVD player to see if it will fit into the Medium 1 box, and it appears as though it will quite comfortably.

Finally, with flashbacks of the movie se7en in my mind, I check to see if my head fits into the Large box. Sure enough, it does.

I don’t know if this is any more convenient than pulling out a tape measure, but it certainly looks cooler. And remember that these are still fledgeling ideas and applications. In a short time, when your mobile device is the augmented lens to view reality through, Priority Mail will have an app that will scan your images with a camera, tell you which box you’re going to need, how much it will cost, and where the nearest outlet is. Heck, it might even beam it directly to your destination.

This entry was written by jted, posted on June 9, 2009 at 11:57 pm, filed under Marketing, Observations, Technology and tagged augmented reality, United States Postal Service. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.