Blippar launches AR City app

Blippar has launched AR City, a large-scale augmented reality experiment in the form of an app.

Currently in beta, the app allows users to access information and content as they travel and navigate around cities. This is the latest step in Blippar's mission to catalogue physical space and redefine the way people discover, experience and interact with the world around them.

Powered by Apple's ARKit, AR City visualises routes with arrows shown in augmented reality. Using GPS, the app estimates the absolute position of the user and tracks local movement using Visual Inertial Odometry (VIO).

The app can be used in a manner similar to Stray Boots, offering advertisers and agencies an avenue to build on it. 

“This is a tech breakthrough and the potential for this tech is huge for the travel, real estate, gaming, autonomous driving and many other industries,” said Ambarish Mitra, CEO of Blippar, in a statement to Campaign Asia-Pacific. “We are making the physical world at a city scale interactive from an access and information point of view.”

Mitra said that Blippar has aspirations to make AR City available as an SDK in the future and give advertisers and agencies the opportunity to promote any kind of digital services they would like.

"Meanwhile, we continue to focus on improving this technology as this is a very recent breakthrough and we are open to collaboration and partnerships that are commercial in nature," he added.