Dive Brief:

• Augmented reality is mature enough to bring benefits to the construction industry, according to a new report.
• Gartner, a trusted researcher and forecaster in information technology, says designers and contractors can find uses for the technology, such as viewing the plans for or progress of excavation in a setting where not everything is visible to the naked eye.
• Augmented reality combines what the human eye can see with computer-generated images merged into the same view. For construction, that could be designers' rendering or information on existing structures above and below ground.

Dive Insight:

There are plenty of real-world uses for augmented reality, such as training workers for jobs in complicated or dangerous situations without having to put them in those environments from the start. Gartner also sees it as a way to better equip firefighters who have to work in a constricted environment with limited visibility.