With augmented reality technology in its way to become ubiquitous within the next decade, there's a large number of problems waiting to be solved with how to make it useful.

One of the major selling points of AR glasses like Microsoft HoloLens is situational awareness, that they know what's around you - allowing you to turn on a light you're looking at, using GPS, 3D scanning and other sensors. There's just one problem - computer vision will never be perfect. But of course it doesn't need to be either, we can help it along the way using things like beacons.

Bluetooth beacons, radio triangulation / trilateration and other such technology already exists. Letting your electronics announce itself to your AR glasses is ways. But we want precision, allowing it to render graphical overlays exactly where we want them when we look at objects.

The easiest solution is to learn from Qr codes and other such 2D barcodes - specialized geometric shapes are easy to detect and measure by the AR device's camera, allowing it to pinpoint where the beacon is relative to your eyes.

The geometric shapes could be decorative, colorful and three-dimensional. They could tell you of they're static (such as placed on a sign) or mobile (on your bag), helping your AR device calibrate its position and direction relative to the world.

You could walk past a store and see opening times and current offers in an overlay, to then call for an approaching cab, record the address of a shop you saw on your way home, to then open your gate and call down the elevator - without pushing a single button, and without reaching for anything, as you'd just be using your AR glasses' interface for every action. And the AR beacons would be assisting you every step along the way in knowing what exactly is in front of you and how to interact with it.