Are you ready to be in two places at once?
Take exercise bikes, for instance, where Wi-Fi-enabled and chip-powered indoor cycling bikes have taken this once solitary exercise routine to a new level of experience. Today’s cutting-edge bikes allow you to stream your favorite music, monitor your performance, video chat with your friends, and cycle through the Alps — all while adjusting the bike’s resistance to mimic the virtual terrain.
Or imagine your family’s future visit to the Egyptian pyramids, transformed by next-gen cameras leveraging AI-enhanced machine vision to track your progress through the site. Augmented reality glasses could overlay the building with the restored architecture, murals, and artifacts of millennia ago. Moreover, an AI-powered travel assistant could curate a personalized tour for each member of your family based on your favorite topics — from the building’s architecture to its uses in Hollywood films.
Or consider the future of shopping streamlined with AI attendants, “metaverse malls,” and augmented reality mirrors that let you “try on” countless outfits from the comfort of your bedroom.
Innovations like virtual, augmented, and mixed reality technologies have innumerable potential applications for consumers, as well as in the health care and industrial sectors. The hardware and software markets thus have the potential to see significant growth in the next few years (Figure 1).
FIGURE 1:
The massive growth potential for the global virtual, augmented, and mixed reality market.
Combined market size (US$ billions)
Sources: Mordor Intelligence, Boston Consulting Group analysis, Statista. Data as of September 2021.
With the evolution of 5G, AI, machine learning, and augmented reality, the future of experiences may soon make the far-fetched idea of “being in two places at once” a reality.
