This book was written for enthusiasts of emerging and interactive technologies who are interested in building AR applications for any market field from the very beginning, and learning about the latest tools to develop them. No prior AR experience is required.

The idea of this book is to introduce you to different AR frameworks by completing a set of projects in different enterprise environments. Although specific programming skills are not mandatory, minimal knowledge is desirable so that you understand the code in each example. Some object-oriented programming skills would be helpful, but they are not required. This book has been written from scratch, so you'll be able to follow any coding necessities step by step.

In this chapter, we will learn what Augmented Reality (AR) is and we will present a brief tour of its history, types, and how it works. We will also introduce the Software Development Kits (SDKs) that we will work with in this book. Finally, we will look at examples of the use of AR and, in particular, its application inside the enterprise. The main objective of this chapter is to understand how AR is being used today, including markets, technologies, devices, and development tools with a variety of AR recognition modes, such as target images, cloud markers, GPS-based, object or face tracking, and spatial mapping. You will also learn about the main AR tools we are going to use in this book and a brief introduction to their main features.

By the end of this chapter, you will have a basic understanding of how AR works and what its different uses are so that you can follow the technical chapters ahead more easily.

In this chapter, we will cover the following topics:

• Understanding AR
• Working with AR
• Using AR in enterprises