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What you said is a nice idea but it isn't really practical or safe to use in that environment. I do with lathes, mills and welding and you wouldn't even use these glasses while operating a machine. If I have to look at a design I step away from the machine and check the design. I'm not going to have a whirly machine of death running while I am looking at the design.

As far as welding goes, here's a slashdot story from five years ago. The demo video is fantastic.

Just because you can't see the use immediately doesn't mean there isn't one.

That's not augmented reality. That's just a transparent screen in front of the face instead of an opaque one to the side. THIS is augmented reality.

That's a pretty bid assertion. How does it feel to be old enough where you need to keep up excuses about young people so you don't have to think about your age?

Going into wearable computing, especially glass, and not knowing of Steve Mann would be like looking into fast food burgers and not stumbling upon McDonalds*

it all old dead tree stuff? really?

http://eyetap.org/publications/index.html

As if the guy who has been wearing computer glasses, he built, wouldn't use digital storage.

all these problems and more have already been solved. indeed, even the parallax problem is solved.

There's no point in waving your hands around in midair unless you have STUFF in midair, like they did in Minority Report or Johnny Mnemonic. We need holographic displays or lightweight, high-resolution head-mounted displays before there will be any point whatsoever in using anything other than ye olde keyboard and mouse (or trackball). The combination of a high-res eyetap, data gloves or hand tracking, and Metisse would be a working starting point if Metisse-transformed windows could be composited etc.

I remember someone in the mid 90's or so made a vest like that for bikers. It would increase the pressure on your back when things were close behind you. Can't find anything about it now. Here's some similar stuff from Steve Mann. http://www.eyetap.org/papers/docs/eudaemonics.pdf

This is why I will just use the fully open alternative (hardware / software) so I can control my own perception of reality. http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/ActiveVision/ http://www.eyetap.org/

The camera isn't mounted in front of the projector. It's mounted at the same distance from a double sided mirror as the eye. There's no parallax problems.

I think what you are looking for is an EyeTap. http://eyetap.org/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyetap

Check out some information here to see how that is accomplished

The realm of 'wearable computing' seems particularly prone to vapourware. For example, check out this awesome device, which has been babbled about for years, and which you still can't buy in stores. And this PMP thing... well, you can't buy it in stores yet either.

Yawn. Wake me when it's available for immediate shipment, with an actual price tag.

Seriously, I'm sick and tired of Slashdot stories slashvertising gadgets that ARE NOT EVEN AVAILABLE YET and may, in fact, never be. Like this damned thing.

What's shown there is a wearable display, but if they use an http://eyetap.org/EyeTap it could get interesting, e.g. mediated reality, lifelong video capture, cyborg collectives in a shared computer-mediated space, etc..

Steve Mann has been doing this kind of thing since the '90s. Well, since 1981, but it didn't really get wearable until the '90s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Mann

http://wearcam.org/steve.html

When I met him at Usenix he looked more like a guy wearing dark glasses and an unusually thick sweater for the season... his wearable computer was built into a vest and the display was hidden in the glasses frame. The new model Eyetap is no more obtrusive than the borg-style bluetooth headsets you see people wearing.

He's done stuff like having his reality completely mediated, with advertising around him bluescreened out by an image recogniser back in his office. The possibilities are endless.

The more technically inclined may be interested in the Eyetap. http://www.eyetap.org/ It's still under development, but would be exactly what you are looking for, as well as having many other applications.

i can email attached video from my phone. my wireless provider charges 5 cents/connect and as far as i can tell one email smtp connection is one connect, so i send video for a nickel. It goes up to http://glogger.eyetap.org/ which shares it. Just a project i'm hacking on for fun.

why doesn't myspace just buy friendster? They can afford it and friendster is cheap. It would also save me and others the trouble of managing yet another social networking profile. ==== Glogger Community http://glogger.eyetap.org/

Meh. This has been done already, even before today's new device.

See: http://www.eyetap.org/research/wearables/wearcomp/ wearables.html
For list of many interesting projects and papers on the subject.

For interesting look at overlaying images onto people via facial recognition and such, see:

http://www.eyetap.org/research/wearables/wearcomp/ ieeecomputer/r2025.html

and

http://www.eyetap.org/research/wearables/wearcomp/ personaltechnologies/

-AC

Meh. This has been done already, even before today's new device.

See: http://www.eyetap.org/research/wearables/wearcomp/ wearables.html
For list of many interesting projects and papers on the subject.

For interesting look at overlaying images onto people via facial recognition and such, see:

http://www.eyetap.org/research/wearables/wearcomp/ ieeecomputer/r2025.html

and

http://www.eyetap.org/research/wearables/wearcomp/ personaltechnologies/

-AC

Meh. This has been done already, even before today's new device.

See: http://www.eyetap.org/research/wearables/wearcomp/ wearables.html
For list of many interesting projects and papers on the subject.

For interesting look at overlaying images onto people via facial recognition and such, see:

http://www.eyetap.org/research/wearables/wearcomp/ ieeecomputer/r2025.html

and

http://www.eyetap.org/research/wearables/wearcomp/ personaltechnologies/

-AC

Good point. Ya know what I wanna know, where can I buy a display built into a pair of sunglasses? The technology exists. There's a market for it. Why has no-one taken a punt and mass produced em yet? You have to make technology acceptable to the masses to reduce the costs and get it into the market. But everyone who makes wearable computers appears to think having equipment attached to your head in new and uncomfortable ways is a sane way to introduce people to them. Consider, for example, the EyeTap. Brilliant technology. Cheap to manufacture. Absolutely no commercial interest. Why? Well, take a look at the picture on that page. If you saw someone wearing that on the street what would you do? You'd back away slowly. Instead, imagine the person had on of those things on each eye and a standard sun glasses filter over the top. Sure, it wouldn't look as avant garde but that's a good thing. You can walk about wearing a pair of enhanced sunglasses without drawing attention to yourself, which means you can actually program your wearable computer to do something useful with your augmented vision.

We need more Eyetaps (http://www.eyetap.org/)

I'd wear that around in public, borg-like or not.

Hm... I wonder why they don't use a form factor more like the EyeTap. It's far less bulky and you still have one of your eyes available.

One of the uses for all that storage is for memory enhancing systems. See wearable computing.

Basically, the computer records and stores your daily activities. Say earlier you met some nice young chica, or a friend with a great business oportunity. Whatever, it's been recorded for you and is indexed and searchable.

"What was her number?" Play it back later on, you have it. Etc..

At least, that's one use for mega-storage. You need speedy processing to go along with it to enable face and voice recognition. I always forget names, it'd be nice to have a cue when I see somebody the next time.

Due to interlacing, a single 525 line picture is split into two ~262 line frames for display on the TV screen.

Lines 243-262 of each frame (off the bottom of the TV) start with 0.3V for 4.7us, and the rest is 0V. This tells the TV to prepare for a new frame.

This leaves just 242*2=484 lines of effective display.

http://eyetap.org/ece385/lab5.htm

As an engineering student at the University of Toronto ("Toike Oike! Toike Oike! Ollum te chollum te chay!" etc.) I shudder everytime I read anything along the lines of "Mann, a University of Toronto professor...". To my knowledge he hasn't taught a class in two years, and hasn't taught anything besides a postgrad seminar based on his own book - moreover his published work is repetitive and focused on his personal goal of becoming a cyborg. His lab is very small in proportion to his media profile and commercially (rather than research) -oriented.

In general this makes me feel badly for some of the truly excellent professors UofT has doing pioneering research in a wide range of fields. They tend to labour in anonymity because their work (in many cases with wider implications than Mann's) is less understandable to the general public and keeps them sufficiently busy to preclude field trips to Seattle malls. I sincerely hope this stunt wasn't in any way funded by his UofT salary.

In Steve Mann's award winning paper he describes a technique he calls Ouijagree. The next time you are presented with an EULA, grab three nearby people (family members, fellow employees) and have them gentle place their fingers on the mouse. Add your own fingers and then call upon the spirits to agree to the EULA. Watch! as the mouse slowly glides from its current position, possibily spelling out the names of lost loved ones, as it approaches the I Agree button. Should it linger over the button too long, feel free to click yourself as the spirits have made their intention clear. Now it is not you who has agreed to that EULA, it's your long dead great grandfather, who came from beyond the grave to take away your legal responsibility.

What is the difference in approach with your kit and say Steve Manns? Admittantly your system is commercial consumer grade where constraints of market and production play a big part in releasing product. But Manns research and production into wearable computers (wearcomp: tapping into his right eye) has been around for ages.

What is the difference in approach with your kit and say Steve Manns? Admittantly your system is commercial consumer grade where constraints of market and production play a big part in releasing product. But Manns research and production into wearable computers (wearcomp: tapping into his right eye) has been around for ages.

Yup! :-)

Which is what I was pointing out -- he started out with that design and moved on to the Eye-tap design that he has now.

Using helmets now is almost going backwards.

This reminds me of the "inversion of the human visual field of view experiment" first performed by George Stratton that now seems an obligatory reference in any image processing/human visual perception classes:
http://eyetap.org/research/wearables/wearcomp/teth erless/node4.html
Basically, you can wear glasses that invert the perceived image on your retina, and your brain will(in time) "correct" for this inversion.

I think this link is worth reading for the following quote:
The unusual appearance of the apparatus was itself a hinderance in my daily activities (for example when I wore it to a formal dinner), but after some time people appeared to become accustomed to seeing me this way.

This looks a whole lot like what Steve Mann has been doing for several decades. He was doing research on wearable displays at MIT for a long time, now he's at the University of Toronto.

Not to say that his way of doing things isn't freakishly strange, but he's definitely a leader in the area:

• His research:
  http://wearcam.org/
• His company?:
  http://eyetap.org/mann/
• Brief summary of him:
  http://www.all-science-fair-projects.com/science_f air_projects_encyclopedia/Steve_Mann
• CNN article:
  http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/01/14/in ternet.cyborb.ap/
• Same article at space.com:
  http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/cyborg_man n_041012.html

I met him at a lecture he gave at McGill last year. I think he's a little out in left field, but he's also very bright, and deserves credit. He's been wearing this kind of laser device for some time now, and doesn't seem to have any retinal burn-in.

I think that you'd have to consider the intensity levels involved, it's a matter of wavelength, intensity and duration of exposure. It's quite possible that the 3 combined make this extremely safe. My approximation is that you probably risk more eye-damage from looking directly at a halogen desk lamp bulb.

His system is more interesting, because he includes a camera, and does image processing to include relevant information about the outside world onto the retinal image that is being displayed: ie. names of people (yes, little laser overlayed name tags), recalling facts and so on. I'm not sure how successful his systems are, but the way he speaks about them, they work fairly sucessfully.

Electronic News Gathering Wearcomps

I just remembered about this guy, Steve Mann. Wacky stuff in the early days but I think this is what he was trying to do. I can't really follow what he talks about now.

I remember a collaborative video project just for multi-source, low-res, worn computer news. Lots of folk wandering around gathering video from their eye-perspective (using early webcams and gargantuan backpack rigs) just so the news could have multiple collaborative sources.

So does this mean that Prof. Steve Mann's 'borg sunglasses are cool now? :-)

Why replace your real eye to do this if it is perfectly healthy? Take a look at EyeTap. This research, mainly by Professor Steve Mann at the University of Toronto has the potential to do everything you describe, and much more besides!

Have a look at the book
Intelligent Image Processing. It describes how to make an EyeTap which is definitely what you want. To date these devices are not available for purchase :(

Check out the eyetap link...

"I am Steve Mann of Borg..."

Uh, I don't know what you read into the question, but no sort of laser device is required. The best solution would be a tiny helmet-mounted LCD that could be glanced up at, or a prismatic system to overlay the display onto their view of the world. A laser or ultrasound rangefinder is useless without an optical sight, but one could easily be built into the display, in a manner similar to red-dot sights on firearms.
The idea that a hud compromises situational awareness is somewhat naive. Yes, a poorly-designed system could compromise SA, but a properly thought out HUD system will have no effect on the user's ability to control a vehicle. Frequently, HUD systems vastly improve a user's abilities - modern fighter jets are unflyable without their HUDs. People are working on wearable computers as a way of improving the user's perception, like eyetap.

http://www.eyetap.org/
is the site that has that classy cyborg Steve Mann demonstrating the eye-tap, which IMHO is a more interesting device. Check it out. Steve's book "Intelligent Image Processing" is a cracker too.. lots of fun maths for doing funky things.

DISCLAIMER: I do not work with or am connected with Steve Mann or Eye-Tap, although I did have lunch with him once, years ago.

What Steve could use is some indsutrial design work on his devices. I'm sure they work, but ... well, wander about the UofT campus for a bit, and you'll surely meet him.

This looks exactly like Steve Mann's EyeTap device. Which, incidentally, runs Linux.

There's an upcoming Workshop on Wearable Camears and Camera Phones, on April 12th, in Toronto. Several people at this event will be wearing eyetap cameras, sending live video to the Internet.

There's an upcoming Workshop on Wearable Camears and Camera Phones, on April 12th, in Toronto. Several people at this event will be wearing eyetap cameras, sending live video to the Internet.

This sounds alot like what Prof. Steve Mann and EyeTap have been experimenting with for a long time. They were featured on the TechTV show "Nerd Nation" not too long ago. Real interesting stuff.

This sounds alot like what Prof. Steve Mann and EyeTap have been experimenting with for a long time. They were featured on the TechTV show "Nerd Nation" not too long ago. Real interesting stuff.

That's probably because it would be too big. But a wearable computer you will want. Small as a wallet and a display in your glasses or contact lens. The PDA/Tablet PC is just a stepping stone.

Same was with laptops. Right now I'd rather have a laptop for my home computing than a desktop. It's powerful enough, the components are affordable. It has a nice screen. It's QUIET!!!! And the keyboard is more comfortable for touch typing.

Every time I turn on my desktop I shudder. There HAS to be an alternative. And a laptop is really it. But the laptop also has faults. It's big, it's heavy (relative to other stuff I like carrying around) and I need to sit down to use it.

The wearcomp is the future. Some people out there are working on these babies right now, and let me tell you. It is going to be hot! (I'm not talking about Xybernauts. Check out Steve Mann's work on eyetap.org. The man is perhaps not as clear as some of the marketing pros out there, but you only need to look at his work to see that he has the right idea. He's on the fringe now, because computers aren't fast enough for his algorithms yet. But when they are, you will see the real paradigm shift (dammit that's such an ugly term, but it applies here) in personal computing. Until then, you will just see a gradual merging of the cell phone with the PC(tablet/laptop whatever).

Yes, I have worked in the Mann's lab in my last year of Skule. And even though I did not really contribute to his work (hey, I don't have the gift), I saw the future in his lab. Working there, you could see the science fiction coming true. I was in constant awe and I had adrenaline in my veins when we unleashed some of the algorithms on the poor raw data we collected. I am not, nor ever will be a computer genius, but I envy the folks who work with Steve every day, because that lab is what passion for computing is all about.

[blink,blink] what am I doing here?

I should go now...

This could be the next step in wearable computing, if you think about it. While it would be hard to sit down with a bunch of hardware on your back, you could walk around with your computer with you, interacting with it through Eyetap and voice commands, or something... Although it might not be necessary, as computers are getting so damn small...

It sort of reminds me of the cyber junkie from S.E. Lain.

one-handed input device
aremac
I've seen ones that look just like sunglasses, but can't find a pic now.

Yes, a typo. The standard EyeTap wearcomp comes with 512 megabytes in the 3GHz P4 configuration.

RWM illustration.

Fundamentals
link to mediated reality.

If I were in his shoes, with all these ideas (30 years ahead of his time) I would be saying fsck GNU! I'd be partnering with Adobe, Microsoft, and make some money selling implementations.

Given what little appreciation has been shown for
what is given away freely (even Stallman is seldom
appreciated), I'd be taking a serious look at using a subscription-based model for all the websites. For the amount of hits that wearcam.org, eyetap.org, etc., get, even just a penny a year subscription would produce a fortune. And I'd be stopping all manner of free talks, or free advice. If you hate the guy that much, at least don't take him for a free ride!

If I were him, I'd be renting a store front, installing some surveillance cameras, and selling shrink-wrap software implementations of VideoOrbits.

Anyone who's actually making real change in the
world attracts a lot of wrath from un-appreciative
people.

Mann, Stallman, Gates, or anyone else who's
changed the parameters of our world is hated by
many. But at least Gates has some money to sweeten the hatred.

RWM illustration.

Fundamentals
link to mediated reality.

If I were in his shoes, with all these ideas (30 years ahead of his time) I would be saying fsck GNU! I'd be partnering with Adobe, Microsoft, and make some money selling implementations.

Given what little appreciation has been shown for
what is given away freely (even Stallman is seldom
appreciated), I'd be taking a serious look at using a subscription-based model for all the websites. For the amount of hits that wearcam.org, eyetap.org, etc., get, even just a penny a year subscription would produce a fortune. And I'd be stopping all manner of free talks, or free advice. If you hate the guy that much, at least don't take him for a free ride!

If I were him, I'd be renting a store front, installing some surveillance cameras, and selling shrink-wrap software implementations of VideoOrbits.

Anyone who's actually making real change in the
world attracts a lot of wrath from un-appreciative
people.

Mann, Stallman, Gates, or anyone else who's
changed the parameters of our world is hated by
many. But at least Gates has some money to sweeten the hatred.