Augmented reality on the horizon due to mobile?

Augmented reality applications could be the ‘killer app’ of mobile. This New York times article touches on this subject. We may be close to the tipping-point where a large enough corporation e.g. Google could provide the capital necessary to encroach us into true augmented mainstream applications. Maybe we are one step closer to truly ubiquitous technology systems.

‘Indeed, a new generation of smartphones like the G1, with Android software developed by Google, and a range of Japanese phones now “augment” reality by painting a map over a phone-screen image of the user’s surroundings produced by the phone’s camera.

With this sort of map it is possible to see a three-dimensional view of one’s surroundings, including the annotated distance to objects that may be obscured by buildings in the foreground. For starters, map-based cellphones simply translate paper maps into a digital medium, but future systems will probably begin to blur the boundaries between the display and the real world.’

Here are two videos that demonstrate the concept using the G1.