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Augmented reality has taken the world by storm as it has found applications in every area from sports, gaming, sales, advertising, learning, touring, to medical and manufacturing applications. New applications are being developed almost daily. Its ability to provide high user intuition and the relative ease of implementation has outperformed VR, which was one of the most notable impacts of the late 1990s. AR on handheld devices has found a proliferation of applications with the advent of smart phones. Moving from marker-based to markerless registration and tracking, mobile and outdoor AR are now common place. AR in design and manufacturing is a relatively new application compared to some of the entertainment type of applications. This is due largely to the accuracy required in tracking and registration in such applications, and a good alignment with traditional practices. Unlike playing an AR game where one can quit any time, the engineering users are likely to spend a considerable amount of time using the system in their jobs, and this is where ergonomics, human factors and cognitive strain on the users must be well recognised and catered to. This paper presents some of the applications of AR which are relevant to the manufacturing community, although most of them are still in the laboratory stage. The paper emphasizes the importance of designing and providing intuitive and effective human interfaces, as well as suitable content development in order to make AR a powerful tool in the manufacturing engineering field. The future trends of AR have also been addressed. Has AR really arrived? Some say it is 80% of the way there, but the remaining 20% will be hard and may take a much longer time.