USPS Priority Mail Augments Shipping Boxes

Most of the attention regarding augmented reality is, understandably, on cool AR games such as Ghostwire. However the technology is also being used increasingly for innovative marketing and boring yet useful practical applications.

One example of the latter is the USPS Priority Mail Virtual Box. This is a simple yet effective augmented reality application that allows you to check the size of your package against the standard flat rate box sizes.

The user prints out a special eagle symbol which is recognised by the computer’s webcam. The system then generates a virtual box on the screen which can be moved around to see whether or not the package fits.

The Virtual Box may not win any prizes for cool but it’s simple and above all useful.