US Ignite Selects Three Cities for Augmented Reality Challenge

Source: GovTech Published: February 24th, 2021

Understanding the deep and layered history of a certain area, broadening an understanding of transit, or growing economic development are all open to exploration through augmented reality technology in the modern city. 

The Southern California city of Long Beach, for example, aims to use AR to create “immersive” exhibits in its historic downtown, while developers in Philadelphia want to use augmented reality to make transportation options more comfortable and welcoming for riders with diverse needs. These are some of the areas several cities — and their partners — will explore using augmented reality technology. The cities were selected as part of the Augmented Reality Developer Challenge organized by US Ignite and Facebook Reality Labs. 

In Long Beach, the city will set aside an area of downtown to serve as a testbed for AR creators, said Ryan Kurtzman, smart cities program manager in Long Beach. 

“For example, there may be a team that thinks that a community is stronger when it has a sense of its history, so their vision of education is to take images of historic Long Beach buildings and superimpose them on top of the modern day locations,” Kurtzman explained. “Or they may want to do an audio tour where each stop uses image recognition to unlock the next audio file.” 

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Photo by Brian McCall on Unsplash