Developers hoping to try out augmented reality on Android devices just had their wish granted by Google Inc. Today the technology giant announced the preview release of ARCore, a software development kit for Android devices that implements mixed and augmented reality without the need for additional hardware.

Augmented reality allows any handheld device with a camera to become a “window” into a mixed reality where virtual objects can be added to scenes. For example, a person with a mobile device could use their phone to “see” a car that they want to buy sitting in their driveway or watch a movie trailer played atop a movie poster outside of a theater before entering.

This development from Google follows similar work from Apple Inc., which released ARKit in beta for iOS 11 devices in June. ARKit is expected to have a stable release version released in coming months.

For the industry, AR adoption has been slow, according to a report from ABI Research in June. Its survey of 455 U.S.-based companies showed only 25 percent actively operating in AR technology — but 75 percent showed varying levels of interest in future implementations. One of the biggest hurdles, reported Digi-Capital in January, is that mobile devices with AR capability are expensive and suffer from battery-life problems alongside a low penetration of AR apps. Although the breakthrough AR mobile game Pokemon Go showed where AR could go — with its extreme popularity and use of mobile devices — adoption by major businesses remains unhurried.

Mark Zuckerberg, chief executive of Facebook Inc., believes that smartphones may be the go-to device that brings AR into the mainstream, saying that as the company invests in augmented reality in addition to virtual reality, “the phone is probably going to be the mainstream consumer platform [where] a lot of these AR features first become mainstream.”

In an attempt to meet this AR market potential for mobile devices, ARCore works with a large number of graphics platforms including Java/OpenGL, Unity and Unreal, making it highly compatible with a large number of development studios already working on AR applications. Also with this preview release, Google is targeting over 100 million Android devices by the end of the beta with the expectation of broad compatibility. The company said it is currently working with mobile manufacturers like Samsung, Huawei, LG and ASUS.

ARCore provides developers sophisticated motion tracking using the phone’s built-in camera to observe feature points in a room or environment as well as inertial measurement unit sensors, such as accelerometers. Combining this information, the SDK can keep virtual project objects properly fixed in their apparent locations.

The software can also detect common stationary locations where objects can be placed, such as floors, tables and countertops. Using the same feature points it uses for motion tracking, ARCore can detect and map out horizontal surfaces. This is important for the many AR projects that place items on tabletops – such as putting a virtual toy on a kitchen table, creating a Minecraft build or projecting a construction project onto a conference table.

ARCore can also use light estimation by taking observations of ambient light sources in the environment in order to properly light virtual objects placed into a scene. This makes it possible for developers to produce realistic-looking objects that better match their surroundings to enhance their appearance.

This preview release of ARCore can also take advantage of objects generated by Google’s previously released 3-D creation tools such as Blocks and Tilt Brush. Graphics artists and developers will be able to take creations produced in these tools and import them easily into AR applications that implement ARCore without the need for further transformation.

Google also mentioned at its I/O 2017 conference in May that the company is working on expanding its augmented reality software ecosystem with greater capabilities. Soon, developers can expect access to Virtual Positioning System, a service that will permit world-scale AR experiences that extend beyond the tabletop. Akin to Global Positioning System, VPS works indoors: After customers reach the front doors of a store using GPS, VPS can take it the rest of the way by guiding them through a store and to the item that they want.

Developers interested in working with ARCore can find more information at the Google AR GitHub repository and there are further examples of how augmented reality can be put to use on Google’s AR Experiments demo page.

Image: Google