http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/22/sonys-smartar-demoed-live-raises-the-bar-for-augmented-reality/

Remember Sony's SmartAR? The markerless AR technology that promises reality augmentation without the need for unsightly tattoos? It's back again, showing itself once more after an all-too-brief 48 hour layoff. A new live-demo shows Sony's markerless object recognition system focusing on posters, tables, books, and coffee cups in lieu of the traditional AR card -- allowing it recognize multiple objects at once. Focusing on objects rather than markers allow augmented entities to interact more naturally with their environment. For instance, bouncing AR balls plummet off the edge of a table, and realistically ricochet off of a book placed in their path. Objects don't even need to remain on screen, as demonstrated by an AR pop-up menu that remained viewable even after the object-marker that spawned it left the viewer's field of vision. Sony seems to have built the groundwork of an augmented reality system that might actually be useful -- pair this up with a set of swank AR glasses (or better yet, holographic AR glasses), and we'll have a vision of the future we can really look forward to.

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I know there were some impressive videos already, but this is the best one yet! Holy crap, with that table and the mug! :-O

Not negative GTFO! 

But seriously an epic video with some sexy tech

I came.

that looks impressive.

what is augmented reality and in basic terms how does it work?

AR is when you look around you with a camera, and various things are being overlaid onto the image, like what you see in the video.

The reason this is particularly impressive, is because normally, AR technology hasn't been stable enough to just use random items, but you had to use special markers that the camera can recognize, like the 3DS does. Sony's implementation here doesn't need anything like that though, it can recognize items that aren't marked.

ah. thanks.

so, what could it be used for then? 

If only I could be reborn in like 100 years.

haha yes. my greatest disappointment in dying will be missing what the world will adapt into.

i believe in an afterlife, but i'm not so sure you'l be able to see the world from there!

Well, Sony have said they want to use it for commercials, so it's definitely going to be put inside some phones soon, and they've said they want to use it for gaming, so a good place to look for ideas of what can be done, would be with other cases of AR in gaming, like these:

thanks, this is all new to me..