An emerging technology known as "augmented reality" soon will allow people peering through computer-powered goggles to overlay virtual images atop those of the real world. Researchers say the technology has practical applications for everything from law enforcement to education.

For a firefighter, a computer-aided streetscape might show a school's fire exits and sprinkler connections—vital details in a fire. For a police officer responding to school incident, the goggles could relay video surveillance images of an assailant, helping the officer get a bead on the bad guy.

And for students, the technology might provide virtual images to supplement lessons.

Chris Dede, Timothy Wirth professor of learning technology at Harvard University, envisions a scenario in which museum exhibits, for example, are augmented by virtual environments. At a panorama showing dinosaur bones found at a tar pit, the technology might depict a virtual reconstruction of the dinosaurs that were trapped at that prehistoric location.

For now, augmented reality—a clever amalgam of computing, Global Positioning System navigation, and a device that tracks a person's head movement—lives mainly in the cluttered realm of university research labs.

The systems first are supposed to determine the user's exact location and field of vision. Then, depending on the program running on the hard drive, the computer augments the scene with images—a yellow building label for the firefighter, a blinking red dot for the sharpshooter, a virtual reconstruction for the student.

Researchers at Columbia University are fashioning some of the innovations. There, users can strap on a backpack frame bristling with 25 pounds of antennas, batteries, and computing gear and take a tour of the upper Manhattan campus.

Instead of seeing only the university's Greek revival halls and tree-draped plazas, the computer goggles superimpose images of long-demolished Victorian buildings that housed an insane asylum predating the school. Building name tags pop up and disappear when you turn your head to gaze around the campus.

The project, created by Columbia's schools of computer science and journalism, has a more pressing purpose than mere campus orientation.

The lead federal agency funding the project is the U.S. Navy's Office of Naval Research, which is spending $2.5 million a year on augmented-reality research.

Spurred by the deaths of United States military personnel in Somalia in 1993, the Navy wants scientists to develop a belt buckle-sized computer and slim pairs of computer glasses to help the Marines fight better in cities.

The Navy also is developing a version for amphibious landing craft that aims to guide invasion forces through minefields, fog, and other hazards. It seems plausible that the resulting technologies eventually will find their way onto school buses, say, to reduce the risk of transporting students during periods of poor visibility.