Slashdot Mirror
Retinal Scanning Displays
Logic Bomb writes "The New York Times has an article covering new advances in the field of display systems that beam images directly onto the retina. An actual useable product has been developed that allows you to see a "projected" image without necessarily interfering with the rest of your vision. It sounds like a great way to watch TV or read news headlines on the bus if you ask me, but the article discusses some more, um, useful applications. )"
I remember seeing a prototype retinal scanning display that Tom Furness and his team had developed at the Virtual Cockpit project for the air force in Dayton. This was almost 10 years ago when he packed up the project and moved it to the University of Washington's Human Interface Technology lab in Seattle. At the time it was bulky but it looked real and ready for refinement. Yet it is still under development and not really here -- not even for the military, who tend to be early adopters of this kind of tech when it's expensive and clunky. So how soon will this *realistically* take to appear in the real world?
(Anybody remember the IBM commercial where the guy on the park bench is jerking around like some kind of Tourette's sufferer -- until they zoom in and we see he's using a wearable to day trade? It's already getting hard to tell the crazy people from the people who are just using cell phones with headsets. How much worse is it going to get with things like this?)
Once this thing hits the consumer market, how long do you think it'll be before we start living with constant advertising in the corner of our FOV. Ugh...
Actually, you're eye does have three different color receptors. Namely red, green, and blue (actually, cyan, magenta, and yellow, which are the subtractive compliments). That is the reason we use RGB screens. For example, red and green light together trick our eye into perceiving the same color as yellow light, even though the wavelength of yellow light cannot be created through any combination of red and green light (physically). RGB screens are a direct result of the biology of our eyes.
Gods, I hope they don't do that. Can you imagine the sticky ads possible when they know just where you're looking? It'd get really annoying if the image followed my vision in space instead of staying put. Besides that, the eye actually introduces a continuous jittering in order to compensate for the human visual system's tendency to ignore static retinal images. Oh gods! the fnords! THAT's what they are.
unlike a CRT's phosphors, our retinas do not have separate 'pixels' for red, green, and blue
Actually, we do. I dont remember the details, but some of our retina's cones and rods capture only specific colors. Color blind or people are people with disorders of such specific cones and rods, when it's not due to brain issues.
I'm partly color blind, as I have difficulty seeing yellow.
When our retina differs from CRTs, however, is resolution, of course.
One good place I found for info on this is this place, and for info specif to color vision, this sub-section is handy.
Karma karma karma karma karmeleon: it comes and goes, it comes and goes.
Add wireless networking and instead of having to look for a band on someones sleeve during a firefight at the local paintball field your box could show everyone who isn't on your team (cause remember it knows where everyone *on* your team is) with their entire body covered in a big bulls eye (hmmm, have to make it smart enough to not do that for the ref I suppose).
--
Poliglut
Um, just replace "www" with "channel" and you don't have to reg.
-----------------------
To understand recursion, one must first understand recursion.
Combined with face-recognition software, this technology might be a great way to work around face blindness. My life would be a lot easier if people's names would hover over their heads :)
The shareholder is always right.
Otherwise people around you will know that you've been surfing porn by the way you're frantically swatting the air in front of you.
The shareholder is always right.
Are you a soccer mom?
Are you not content with distracting yourself from driving your Land Yacht with a plain old cellphone?
Do you hate how you have to miss the current episode of "Days of Our Lives" when you go to pick up little Jimmy from kindergarten?
Fear not! There is a solution to your problems - A retinal display!
...
...
God help us all. The thing is, you KNOW there's going to be people who will do just that.
-- Dr. Eldarion --
I'd say sooner, but I imagine it will be a while before your average consumer can afford to own a few pair.
I just hope I don't have old packman mazes burned into my retina when I'm 80.
Rats would be more funny if they could fart.
Acutally, I liked the idea Neal Stephenson used in Snow Crash: use the laser to rear-project onto translucent goggles the user's wearing. The indirection would keep the user safer from a system malfunction.
John
John
Basically, if you put this with a real-time speech recognition system that was a 1000x better, you effectively have created a wearable "real-time closed-caption" display for deaf people. They would use it in the everyday world whenever hearing people spoke to them, so that they know what a person said. I'm deaf myself and I would love to see something like this in sunglasses form.
Another application for the above product would be as a language translator for the tourist going abroad in other countries. The system would translate any foreign language into the wearer's native language and display it. Great way to learn the French language. =)
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
Who was the brave soul who first agreed to that insanity?
Oh my God! They're shining light into people's eyes? What are they, INSANE???
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
After their first 'virtual retina display' was prototyped, they had visitors in their lab looking at the device. One gentleman placed his right eye onto the scanner and went through the demonstration. When he was asked if he was thoroughly impressed with the demonstration, he replied, "Yes, but not with the demonstration itself, but rather the fact that I saw the demonstration with my blind eye."
The man only had the ability to use 5-10% of his optic nerves in his right eye. So he was partially blind but amazing nonetheless.
Here are other articles on the subject: an older zdnet story and '98 discover technology award
-sal terre
I tried one of these out late last year when Microvision was at the AUSA convention. I wouldn't say that it doesn't interfere with your vision, however; you have a small screen in front of your eye, which is translucent but colored as well. It's a very far cry from just having something appear in your vision as an augmentation to normal sight.
Also, due to the fact that a small blue laser for this application has yet to be invented (and for that matter, ANY blue laser with a long lifespan that can be used for this application), color displays are quite a long way off. They have the red and green, but blue is a major problem.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.