Andrew Walmsley on Digital: Information is power

These guys have augmented reality; head-up displays that constantly scroll information about what they see. Identifying people and weapons, displaying the temperature, location and other data, it enables them to find and neutralise their targets quickly and efficiently.

Augmented reality isn't just a sci-fi dream, though: it's here now. We are used to having satnav in our cars for route information, for example, and this form of augmented reality has become commonplace. But satnavs are becoming more sophisticated, with layers of information such as details on petrol stations, restaurants and pharmacies; the latest ones access traffic information and update the recommended route accordingly.

This is pretty annoying. Having got used to ignoring the satnav when it made a particularly poor judgment about my route, now it knows something I don't. Is a seemingly irrational route recommendation a smart one informed by the latest data, or is it one of those gems that's going to have me crossing a ploughed field in Oxford-shire to get to my nearest Sainsbury's in Chiswick? I'm becoming more pliant as it gets smarter, but there's a resentment there. It probably knows that, too.

Just as we get so familiar with satnav in cars that we are even buying comedy voices for them, augmented reality is about to spring forth from the car dashboard to the rest of our world.

The Wikitude World Browser on iPhone and Android handsets presents the user with real-time information about their surroundings and landmarks, viewed through the camera and displayed with the image on the screen.

Similarly, a free iPhone app, Layar, provides labels and supporting information on tourist sites around the world. It will also point out any Mazda dealer-ships you walk by, any casinos in Las Vegas (although these are not hard to spot), and any UK golf course - these are among hundreds of businesses that have added their data to the system.

The best of these, though, is the Metro Paris app, which overlays street, tourist and travel information on the image as you hold the camera up, as well as pushing notifications to your phone about subway delays.

It's not only out on the street that AR is breaking out. If you have Apple TV, you can use an iPhone to control it, viewing supplementary data about what's on your TV screen.

And if you are in Singapore, you could be using Futurecart, a shopping trolley with a big LCD screen. Driven by RFID, the trolley knows its location in the store, and displays offers that relate to the fixture you are standing next to. The makers expect the system to integrate with loyalty cards in the future, allowing for bespoke customer deals - as well as creating plenty of data about how individuals navigate stores.

In future, as people bring their own devices into stores, they will check reviews and compare prices by simply pointing their device at the product they are interested in. An early app for the Android phone allowed users to use barcodes to pull up precisely this type of information and linked directly to online stores for purchase. Similar apps are also available for the iPhone.

Few consumers are as intimidating as Arnie or as single-minded as Robocop, but the destructive power they wield in their phones as they stand in Currys while buying from Amazon could be just as scary for the high street.

Andrew Walmsley is co-founder of i-level

30 seconds on Android

• Android is an operating system for mobile devices. The Android start-up was acquired by Google in 2005, sparking rumours about its plans, among them the possibility of creating a Google phone. Google set to developing the software, which runs on a Linux kernel.
• In November 2007, the Open Handset Alliance (OHA) was unveiled. The consortium of firms including Google, LG, Motorola and T-Mobile released the Android platform as its first product.
• Android has been available  under an Apache (free software and open source) licence since October 2008.
• Last week, it was announced that the Motorola Droid, which went on sale in the US this week, would be the first to offer Google Maps Navigation, a free app providing turn-by-turn directions with various visual guides in response to voice commands or typing in an address.
• The names given to Android's updates have had a distinct bakery theme: first came Cupcake, then Donut and Eclair; Flan will be next.