Modern megacities are, in most cases, cities with a lot of history, built hundreds of years ago. Rome, London, Paris and even glass-metal New York were designed when people could not even think about digital technologies. Now, in order not to drown in the human, information and traffic flows, we must move to a new stage of our development.

We need to make our cities “smart”, that is to integrate information technologies into everyday life. And to do so, one of the most useful and promising techs is augmented reality. It will speed up access to data, discover new forms of leisure and become the ultimate guide through majestic and beautiful human anthills, making them comfortable for life again.

Navigation

The life of any city is moving forward. The density of construction, the complexity of traffic flows, the number of companies and the concentration of interesting places per square kilometer grows exponentially. We are increasingly confused in the intertwining of useful and useless data.

Arcona can solve the problem of information overloading. It creates, for each city, its own digital level of reality, which will help you easily navigate in an urban environment. This layer can be accessed and seen through simple technical tools — for example, smartphones. In this layer, any useful information is placed, linked to certain coordinates. It can be ordinary geotags or information boards, 3D graphics, animation, video, photos, audio and other content. All this data is combined with maps. When loading Arcona, you get access to the global information layer, that is, you will see all objects created in Arcona or connected to the system from the real world.

So, what are the opportunities for people and business? Well, you could, for example, place an information board over the rail station building, bus station or metro, attaching to it an on-line button for ordering tickets; you could create an amazing interactive city guide, set up a virtual shop with souvenirs in the busiest place of the city or enhance the regular classic store with digital content … Arcona easily directs people in all real and digital places, ranking them by utility for each user.

Tourist navigation is especially interesting. Any travel agency will be able to create unique routes with graphical tips and explanations, entertaining customers, along the way, with games and unexpected turns of an individual excursion for which a real guide is not needed.

Information and infrastructure

Local decentralized information becomes an urgent necessity. Often, the data is needed in a very specific place with an accuracy of centimeters. The ability to leave labels and explanations should be delivered to both ordinary users and representatives of municipal services, administrations, and businesses. Advertising and marketing campaigns should go a part — therefore, in our real reality the streets will remain free of bright ads, and the user will see them only if he chooses to do so.

There could be plenty of city informatization examples. Community services could place information about works, its time schedule, etc., both for their clients and for employees of municipalities. You can note everything, from burned bulbs to places of restoration of architectural monuments, and with 3D models of future structures.

Arcona will be integrated with the Internet of things. This means that the data from each object connected to the system, can flow towards the consumer, with updates in real time. Anything can become “smart”: clothing in stores, buildings, cars, parking and underground communications, equipped with inexpensive sensors. Thus, Arcona can easily become a convenient platform for communication of people, business and city authorities.

Entertainment

The urban environment isn’t comfortable if it has only a utilitarian function. Augmented reality can help it, opening unique opportunities to bring colorful computer games to the real world. And even more, to use all the advantages of gaming motivation to stimulate the inhabitants to an active lifestyle.

You should be already familiar with games based on geolocation, when for catching monsters you need to move around the city with your smartphone at the ready. Today, these are different applications with different (sometimes, very low) technical quality and poorly designed interfaces, without any platform. Arcona will take this place, offering the most modern technologies, such as ARKit and ARCore, as well as various recommendations for creating the most comfortable entertainment.

AR games will enrich leisure, work, study, training in the fresh air. You can gamify any process, all you need is fantasy.

Street art will also get the impulse to development. To arrange dozens of different exhibitions in the same place — this task had no solution in the past, so the cultural urban landscape changed slowly, and one location at a time could entertain only a specific group of people. AR removes this limitation, so you could easily switch, on your smartphone, from a competition of three-dimensional graffiti to the ballet production of the local troupe, or turn the historical city layout into a modern interactive map of entertainment locations. Such a concentrated abundance of content disposes people of different views towards communication and mutual understanding, helps to socialize in megacities. Yes, AR has the potential to become a therapy for social problems.

Arcona will become a breath of fresh air for the overloaded megacities. Their residents and guests will receive an intuitive interface for orientation in the endless urban space and unique content with a print of the local culture and traditions of each region. You will become the first citizens of the new world of integrated reality. Treat it with love and sincere interest, and it will be a wonderful place, the best one that existed until now.

Learn more about the Arcona project on our TG.