Every year Barbara Wells returns to her familys home in Brick for a visit, but shell never forget what happened this summer.It has been an absolute nightmare, said Wells, who lives in Strasbourg, France.She has spent much of her trip worrying and trying to find a piece of luggage lost at Delta Air Lines baggage claim area at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City. 

I see my family three weeks a year. It is completely ruined, Wells said.Rather than relax, Wells has spent hours on the phone and received inaccurate or conflicting information. She made a two-hour trip to the airport to try to find her bag or details about what happened.It started before she and her son boarded a KLM Royal Dutch Airlines flight from Amsterdam to London on July 8. Her carry-on bag, which was the proper size, was pulled at the gate and put in the belly of the plane. 

But it didnt make it to Heathrow Airport in London. She reported it missing and moved on to her connecting Delta flight to JFK. When she arrived in New York, she checked the baggage claim desk, but the bag hadnt made it.What happened to it is still unknown. She found out that her bag made it to JFK on July 9. It was scanned in, but there is no further record of it.She had been told that the bag had been sent to a KLM courier and that it was on its way to Brick, Wells said.In addition to trying to figure it all out, Wells was left with another problem: the bags contents. It included a new pair of prescription Dior sunglasses, reading glasses, and iPad and iPhone cords and chargers. 

DAQRI is taking strides to legitimize the medium by partnering with big-name brands like Maxim and Target, and the company is charting a next step to bring AR experiences to educational toys and games. The startup tipped its hand on Wednesday with the launch of a Kickstarter campaign for a set of Elements 4D blocks that enable users to interact with virtual versions of elements. Ive played with the blocks, and theyre a clever educational tool. Combining various blocks shows the properties of chemical reactions and their respective compounds. 

Mullins got an early start in the augmented reality field in the 1990s by working with the Department of Transportation creating ship simulations for docking practice. His team worked on creating a massive virtual shipyard, hacking pairs of binoculars so they would work as mixed reality. He also worked on control systems and robotics at the Space and Naval Warfare Lab before venturing into the civilian sector. 

When Apple released the iPhone 4, Mullins was inspired to start DAQRI after realizing that the device had sufficient computing power and a decent enough camera to create mixed reality experiences. DAQRI first set out to become the YouTube of AR with the idea of enabling creators to submit their own experiences. 

Mullins, however, quickly realized that the market was still unfamiliar with the technology. The startup then decided to pivot and focus on creating the tools and platform needed to help creatives as they develop their AR solutions. The company now views itself as the Adobe of augmented reality because it offers tools for designing these experiences, instead of just a platform to share them. 

One of the first big breaks for DAQRI, which recently raised $15 million to increase its engineering, design and sales teams, was signing a partnership with printer Quad/Graphics in 2011. Since then, the two have teamed up on over 1,000 AR campaigns for Quad/Graphics clients, which include Target, Maxim and Lego. 

A self-professed movie lover, Mullins compares the current state of AR to the early days of film. One of the first moving pictures simply showed a close perspective of a train arriving at the station. Despite the fact that it was a gimmick, it impacted audiences. However, things really got interesting once filmmakers moved on to stories,This vertical Cable Organizer can be mounted to either. such as The Great Train Robbery. AR creators need to evolve the platform to tell compelling stories instead of leaning too heavily on the technology itself, he said. 

DAQRIs platform for toys is called Enchantium and is set to arrive later this year. Mullins office is decorated with a combination of science fiction posters and the steampunk-influenced demos. One example, which the team built in-house, is a fascinating set of laser-etched woodblocks that turn into chemistry elements when viewed through the DAQRI app. Blocks can be combined to make different compounds, adding an interesting,Winbo photo frames and educational,Winbo ear caps layer of interactivity to them.

Our job as technologists is to reduce the friction between an idea and the manifestation, Mullins told developers during a keynote at the bootcamp. [We want] the minimum amount of invasiveness for the maximum amount of capabilities.Wearable computing, especially head-mounted displays, will open up another layer of potential for AR. DAQRI has committed to supporting Google Glass from day one, though the current placement of the headsets screen makes it sub-optimal for augmented reality experiences because it cant overlay an image the way a tablet or smartphone with a rear camera can. 

When its done right, augmented reality feels like science fiction becoming reality, and Mullins is drawing on the genre for inspiration.LA-based DAQRIs proximity to the movie industry is also a good fit for Mullins. In his view, Southern Californias creative culture understands theyre creating a world when theyre putting it on screen, similar to what hes trying to achieve with AR.