Demand of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Apps on the Rise

Scientific breakthroughs in mobile phone technology have brought us a long way since the invention of the basic Symbian phones two decades ago. Not only do all modern phones now come with their own set of built-in apps, we now have the option to choose from thousands of different free applications to download on our phones for different uses. This explosive era of innovative Mobile Application development has brought about a rise in the demand for more futuristic mobile phone applications and technology in general, and immersive technologies in particular. The market of Custom Mobile App Development Services for Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Apps is rising worldwide

Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality Apps Demand Rising

What is Immersive Technology?

Immersive technology is a special branch of digital technology that allows users to be partially or completely immersed in a digital simulation. When technology is used to augment a user’s experience of the real world it is termed as Augmented Reality (AR). When technology is used to completely immerse the user in a virtually simulated world, it is termed as Virtual Reality (VR). These two technologies are finding more and more potential applications every day. Trends of Mobile App Development for Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality apps have changed drastically.

Usage of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Apps

There are countless possible applications of Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality in all fields of technology, ranging from healthcare to industrial development. The main scope of Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality apps are listed below.

1. Healthcare
2. Education
3. Industrial Design
4. Troubleshooting of Large Scale Manufacturing Systems
5. Social Media Applications
6. Virtual Reality Mobile Apps

Here is the detail of the main usage of Immersive technology for Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Apps.

Healthcare

Both Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality can be used to revolutionize healthcare by allowing practitioners to train in an interactive 3D environment. Healthcare professionals can learn with a more hands-on approach by performing mock surgeries in a simulated environment, whereas non-intrusive options for healthcare can be provided to patients that require assisted living/monitoring. VR and AR both provide options to patients to transmit real-time data about their diseases to their healthcare providers, in turn allowing them to better diagnose and treat their ailments.

Education

Immersive educational technology enhances the students’ learning of the subject matter at hand tenfold. Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality can allow students to travel virtually anywhere; experience sights, sounds, and motions from any corner of the universe, all from the convenience of their own home. The potential uses of AR and VR in an educational setting are nearly endless.

Industrial Design

Virtual Reality has already been in use for a long time to help generate virtual models of products before they are sent off to be manufactured. Computer-Aided Design software utilizes a form of Virtual Reality in which architects, scientists, and engineers design their prototypes in a virtual environment, which are then translated into physical models upon approval. Virtual Reality, in this case, saves manufacturers thousands of dollars from prototype development alone.

Troubleshooting of Large Scale Manufacturing Systems

Faults in the assembly line or large scale manufacturing systems cost companies a lot of money if left undetected. With the introduction of Virtual Reality, these companies now invest heavily in VR simulation software that allows them to virtually simulate their systems, predict faults and effectively troubleshoot them when they appear.

Social Media Applications

With social media enterprises becoming the largest profiting industries in the world, the use of AR or VR in social media applications is also on the rise. Companies are now heftily investing in Augmented Reality App Development and Virtual Reality Application development. These apps utilize AR features such as real-time photograph filters (already offered by companies such as SnapChat, Instagram and Facebook) and geo-tagging that allow users to provide information about their physical location to other users through social media.

Virtual Reality Mobile Apps

The gaming industry has the biggest market of Virtual Reality Technology. Virtual Reality Mobile Apps use specialized Virtual Reality Headgear, 3D technology, special motion-sensors and more to provide a surreal gaming experience to their users. With VR gear becoming cheaper by the day, the possibilities of growth in this sector become unlimited.

Trends in Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Application Development

International Data Corporation (IDC) predicts that the Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality markets will both see a rise in demand for AR and VR technologies in the upcoming 5-year period. This trend has been attributed to the development of better software to cater to AR and VR users, especially the development of better Augmented and Virtual Reality Mobile Apps, the manufacture of cheaper, more affordable VR and AR gear, and commercial interest from titans of the gaming industry in AR and VR technologies.

Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality technology market suffered setbacks in 2017 owing to a decreased consumer interest to buy standalone VR/AR headsets-the specialized gear necessary to utilize AR or VR software. With Lenovo’s success in rolling out the new Lenovo Mirage Augmented Reality headset, other tech giants such as Samsung, Dell, HP, Acer and Windows have stepped in the game with augmented and virtual reality headsets of their own. Cheaper, more accessible Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality hardware is now the goal of these manufacturers.

Augmented Reality Trends Forecast

AR headsets are expected to see exponential growth during 2018-2022. AR devices will be responsible for 97% of the overall AR/VR market in the next 5 years. Commercial shipments of Augmented Reality Screen-less viewers have been predicted to increase by 2019. The IDC predicts augmented reality gear shipments to range up to 30 million by the year 2022.

Virtual Reality Trends Forecast

By the year 2022, the IDC predicts that tethered and standalone devices will account for a total of 85.7% of the total shipments in the Virtual Reality Headset category. Nearly 70 million shipments of VR headsets are expected by the year 2022. Businesses interested in Immersive Technology applications can take help from IT Path Solutions, the USA based Custom Software Development Company for developing Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality Apps.

Creative Ways You Can Improve Your Alexa Skills Development

Over the past decade, voice assistants have progressively entered our lives. Names like Alexa, Siri, Google Assistant, and Cortana will surely ring a bell. But it was way before these names that the concept of a voice assistant was brought to light.

As far as back in 1962, IBM launched the first-ever voice assistant, named Shoebox. If you hadn’t guessed it, its size went by its name. It could do the mathematical functions and recognize digits 0-9 and 16 spoken words. Then came Harpy with a vocabulary of a three-year-old, it could recognize 1,011 words.

All of these initials innovations had paved a way for what was to come next. Apple, Amazon, Google, and other giants got their best brains on this, and the result was for the world to see!

Fast-forwarding to today, “Hey Siri”, “Alexa!”, “Okay, Google” is commonly known.

But out of all these, Alexa stands out for the masses. Being available on 100Mn devices, it has become the talk of the industry. And it isn’t just the Talking Tom with a speaker, it actually does your chores for you, and sometimes gets you like no one else.

Technically speaking, it uses AccuWeather to provide weather reports and news with a plethora of sources such as NPR, ESPN, and local radio stations.

It understands users’ needs for the beats and streams all of the rock, pop, and midnight melodies from the owner’s Amazon Music account, and offers built-in support for Spotify and Pandora accounts. It can manage the alarms and to-do lists in the way you want and also make important calls for you.

All these tasks Alexa does is through its built-in capabilities called Alexa Skills Development. Users can teach and inculcate new skills in Alexa using the Alexa Skills Kit, which can then be accessed by making requests or asking questions. You can create smart home skills, music skills, video skills, flash briefing skills, and custom skills as well.

It is a comprehensive device operating on the latest technology and does everything that you could expect from a voice assistant at the most.

In this guide, we’ll look at custom Alexa skill development, but before that,

“Alexa, what all should I know before building an Alexa-skill?”

 The common (obvious) prerequisite to building any type of skill is an account on the Developer Console, which would be used to create the configuration for your skill.

The configuration would require the information about the skill, such as the name of the skill, the type of interaction model, the content feed or endpoint, and other information. This configuration is used to determine the user requests that should be sent to the Alexa service for your skill.

Tools to build a Custom Skill:

You will need an internet-accessible endpoint to host the cloud-based service, Amazon Web Services(AWS) account, and Amazon developer account to use AWS Lambda, an appropriate developer environment, and an Alexa-enabled device for testing.

Tools to build a Smart-Home Skill:

You would need an account with AWS, an appropriate developer environment for your preferred programming language. You can use Node.js, Python, Java, C#, or Go to author a Lambda function. For testing, you must have an Alexa-enabled device.

Tools to build a Video Skill:

Building a Video Skill would require a cloud-enabled video service provider with a public API or access to the cloud-based service, an account with AWS, an Alexa-enabled device, and an appropriate developer environment for coding.

Tools to build a Flash-Briefing skill:

You will need a content feed that would be accessible via the Internet, using RSS or JSON, which would refresh with the new content.

Tools to build a Music skill:

For a music skill, you need to have an Amazon developer account, an Alexa-enabled device registered to it, an AWS account, a music service to stream music and a cloud API to control it.

“Alexa, how do I make you work?”

 Alexa could be requested for telling the horoscope in two ways, one is,

Alexa, ask Horoscopes Today for the horoscope for Pisces.” where the sample utterances are matched with the invocation, the other is:

“Alexa, what is my horoscope?”, where an Alexa custom skill is indirectly invoked.

It is all a simple play of intents and utterances, your sample utterances should match the invocations you use to ask questions or request Alexa.

The invocation name is combined with a command, action or question which further sends an “IntentRequest” with the intent corresponding to the user’s requests. The command, action, or question in your invocation phrase is defined in the sample utterances and mapped to the intents.

Times may come when the users would want Alexa to just get whatever they are saying, to ease the exasperation that may result, provide a plethora of sample utterances written in various forms.

Also, who would not want to get their personalized playlist listed beside every mood that a day could encounter. Alexa can stream music and media as you ask it to. Once the Alexa device is registered to the user’s Amazon account, they can request any track from their fully-accessible Amazon Music Library.

“Alexa, what are your Technical Aspects?”

What are the technicalities to keep in mind?

Now, there should be no ambiguity in the answer to this question. The job here is to create a cloud-based service to handle the request for the skills and host it in the cloud.

To build a custom skill, the AWS Lambda function is used. An alternative to this is writing a web service (in any language), in which case the web service would respond to the request sent by Alexa.

An Interaction Model is defined when creating a custom skill. It is used by Alexa to fetch the words from the voice and translate them into a request, which is then sent to a particular skill.

The other skill types have their APIs which provide a built-in interaction model.

“Alexa, how do I build a Skill?”

The skill-building process is organized on the Developer Console in a systematic way from creating a skill on the Build page to testing and analyzing it.

• Building a Skill:

On the Build Page of the Developer Console, perform the setup and configuration of the skill. Specify the corresponding interaction model and the endpoints for the service. All these options are easily available on the Developer Console.

However, it depends on the model of the skill that what specific options should be used here. For a custom model, intents and sample utterances are created. For pre-built smart home models, an endpoint is specified and account linking configuration is performed.

• Testing a Skill:

A skill could be tested in multiple ways. Utterance Profiler is used to test the custom interaction model.

On the Test page of the Developer Console, there is a simulator that gives access to the Alexa Skill development Kit features, and it is used for testing the skills. Another option is to test using an Alexa-enabled device.

The skill can also be tested from the command-line using ASK CLI commands.

Or else, Skill management API provides the skill-testing features for the same.

• Previewing a Skill:

The Distribution page on the Developer Console is used to determine the availability of the skill and have a glance at how it would appear when viewed in the Skill Store.

The metadata used here is language-specific. The details are required to be filled in each language supported by the skill. This data would then be displayed on the skill detail page accessible in the skill store.

• Verifying a Skill:

On the Certification page, verify that your skill is all ready and submit it for the certification process. The publication status of the skill will be displayed on the Status column of the Developer Console.

Once the skill is published, the publication status changes to live. Here, the skill can also be hidden or removed.

If there are any certification failures or issues, then they are fixed for successful validation and certification.

• Analyzing a Skill:

The Analytics page on the Developer Console is used to view the usage metrics for a skill. This dashboard depicts detailed information about how the customers are using the skill.

The present demand of the Voice Assistants has made it clear that they are changing the lifestyle of the people for good. It has been analyzed that the people who do not own a smart voice assistant desire to purchase one.

It is anticipated that the voice assistants would be made so smart that on your slightest whisper of “Alexa, I’m hungry”, it will automatically order your most favored cuisine.

AI has the capabilities that will help the smart speakers to think and learn by themselves without being programmed for every other intent. Artificial Intelligence is going to be the market leader and Voice Assistants, being a product of it, and always learning and improving, aren’t going anywhere. The Voice Assistants are here to grow and stay.

Now, if you’re looking for Alexa skill development for your company, make sure you hire a professional team and avoid any last-minute hassles. It’ll not only help you improve your customer services, but also help you save your time while placing you ahead of your competitors.

If you are looking for Alexa Skill & Mobile app development services, visit our Website: http://itpathsolutions.com/

A Guide to Mobile App Development Company Life-Cycle Phases

According to the research made on the revenue generated from app stores, experts shared their views and mentioned that by 2020, the revenue figure would reach almost $80.5 billion.

Play Store has almost 2.8 million apps and the iOS App Store has almost 2.2 million apps. This huge affluence of apps depicts one thing for sure and it is the 'competition' in the market.

To survive successfully in today's vying market, you need to make sure that you don't waste any valuable resources along with valuable time. Read on to get an overall idea of the different mobile application development phases to get the most fruitful outcome of this development process.

Pre-Planning

See, it is not like one fine day, a brilliant idea comes into your mind and from the very next moment, you start executing it! In reality, you need to do a lot of research, a lot of market analysis, need to ask yourself a lot of questions before proceeding further with your idea.

You need to understand why you should build this app, what the main aim it, how it can benefit the users, how it is different from its competitors and more importantly, how this app can help you to enhance your business prospects!

Everything mentioned above, are under this pre-planning stage that is equally crucial as building an application.

Mental Prototyping

Even before the technical part kicks in, there is too much mental work! How? Well, jot down everything on pen and paper. At the pre-planning phase, you should have a basic idea of the total development cost. However, at this stage, add every detail that comes to your mind, write it down, keep a note. This documentation will help you to keep a close check on the different overhead expenses.

You may consult with a designer at this stage. The idea will definitely be yours but consulting an expert means you will get a more stunning, more flexible, more dynamic and interactive design that will help in your development phase.

Technical Part

You need to understand that the backend functionalities and the design are completely distinct things but they need to work in a synchronized way. Above all, you can't compromise with the quality. However, making a decision on which platform to choose is a bit confusing. Every platform has unique features, its own set of benefits. So, depending on different aspects such as available resources, skills, target audience, features you want to include in the app, etc., choose a mobile app development platform.

Prototype Building

A prototype will help you to get an overall idea or a well-defined preview of the application you are developing. Obviously, you cannot get every feature and functionality in it but it will help you to optimize the design. You can easily spot the loopholes and make the necessary changes from the beginning that will save a lot of the total development cost.

Designing and Development

It is always advisable to seek guidance from experts in these two phases. Partnering with a well-established mobile app development company will help you to get better insights on the UI/UX that is important for grabbing the users' attention. The designing phase gives the visual directions along with the blueprints that help to give shape to the final product.

Next, the development phase should follow the agile method. Make your application unique, flexible and functional at this stage using cutting-edge technologies.

Testing

This phase comes just after the development stage. It helps you to check the app functionality, environment, features, navigation, debugging and whatnot. Both UAT testing and Beta testing are important for providing your users with impressive user experience.

Launching

Once you are over with all the above-mentioned stages, you are all set to launch your application. You need to give it to the app stores and wait for their approval. However, once your app gets the approval and goes life, your work does not end! You need to work on the regular updates along with the addition of new features.

So, this is a basic outline of the different stages of building a mobile app.

Rob Stephen is a veteran app developer, who is presently working with IT Path Solutions, a UK, USA-based well-known app development firm and leading a dedicated team of professional mobile app development company He is serving in this UK market for years and has the knack of following the latest trends and penning down interesting technology-related articles on diverse topics. For more information, visit the official website or follow the LinkedIn page of IT Path Solutions.