Augmented Reality Promotional USB Flash Drives

A lot of our articles recently have been on the development of USB technology and other general technology. This has got us thinking about other applications for technology on USB sticks for promotional purposes and to create a buzz, so we got thinking about augmented reality.

For those of you who haven’t heard of augmented reality it is a pretty cool development in technology.  Many of you will have come across it on televised sport without knowing it as augmented reality.  It is used in the end of game analysis on Match of The Day, to measure and show distances of kicks on live rugby and in athletic events to show world records and competitor results.  All of these uses make watching sport more interesting and informative.

The more known uses of augmented reality are in smart phone applications.  Applications that use the smart phone’s camera to show where a restaurant is around you or point out and label landmarks use augmented reality.  These applications can be really impressive and quite helpful.

Augmented Reality with branded USB flash drives

Augmented reality has also been used to advertise cars and films with a computer and a webcam.  BMW used augmented reality back in 2009 to advertise the release of the new Z4.  All that was needed was simple piece simple software was downloaded from the website to use the webcam and a Z4 printout.  Once the application was software was opened and the piece of paper was placed in view of the webcam a 3D version of the new Z4 car could be seen on the paper that could be turned and spun to see each angle of the car.  A nice added feature was that the car could also be driven round your desktop leaving coloured tyre marks on the screen to match the television advert.

Pepsi used a similar idea with their drink cans to advertise the release of the Avatar film.  When a can was placed in view of the webcam a helicopter from the film appeared on the screen and followed the can around.  We have also seen boxes that display the ring from Lord of the Rings in it, T-shirts that show a dagger in the chest and many more creative ideas.

With the recent article that we wrote about company who used their promotional USB memory sticks to print QR codes on we thought that branded USB flash drives are an ideal medium for augmented reality.  The software could be pre-loaded onto the logo USB memory stick to be installed onto the computer and when the webcam recognises the USB flash drive it displays a company logo or something even more creative like and interactive product.  To see which of our many, branded USB memory sticks are most suitable for your creative, technological and creative ideas visit our branded USB product range.