Business cards make great AR Anchors. Usually they are distinct, of a known size and are carried around by us all the time. For this reason I am trying out some personal Augmented Reality experiments with my own business card with the permission of my employer Leasing.com.

Note, the code samples on how to achieve these effects will soon be on XamarinArkit.com, a website where I am documenting what I learn with Xamarin, ARKit and C# in the form of small lessons with code samples.

Whilst these examples of Augmented Reality don't have obvious direct commercial application, I ask the reader to imagine a world 5 years into the future where AR glasses are mainstream and have began replacing our 'little black screens' as our main choice for interface interaction.

It doesn't take much imagination to think of the business applications once AR glasses have become mainstream. It will be an unprecedented era of innovation and be a gold rush to get a piece of the AR market.

I tried four different augmented reality experiments with my business card..

Playing a video on the business card

We have an introduction to Leasing video on Leasing.com, so in this experiment I thought I would try and play that video on top of the card. It works very well and responds well to chancing the orientation of the card better than I thought it would.

Showing a vertical wall of images

In this experiment, upon detecting the business card logo, I am showing vehicle manufacturer logos in a vertical grid with a little transparency. It's quite a nice effect and who knows could evolve into some sort of AR menu system in future. I'd prefer the grid even more if it were slightly curved at either edge.. perhaps a future improvement.

Providing additional personal information

In this experiment, I am augmenting the information side of the business card with additional information about myself, including headshot and social media icons. By this point I've even figured out how to fade opacity in which is a nice effect.

Showing a 3d model on the card

In this experiment, as I work for an automotive company, I thought it might be nice to try and show a 3d model of a car on top of the detected business card. It seems to work ok.

Summary

Hopefully you found these experiments in augmented reality interesting. For more information about my experiments with Augmented Reality visit ManchesterDeveloper.com/videos or follow the lessons I am creating to learn how to use Augmented Reality with Xamarin, ArKit, C# and .NET yourself on XamarinArkit.com.

-- Lee