Slashdot Mirror
A Computer Display in Ordinary Sunglasses?
DonaldP asks: "I've been making head-mounted displays for wearable computers for a couple or three years now; I think my latest and greatest 3rd Generation display is a big step ahead! It fits inside a normal-looking pair of sunglasses. Why would I do something like this? As far as I know, this is one of the only ones available out there - the only others that come close are made by MicroOptical Corporation, but it's been years and you STILL can't actually BUY any of their products. With large companies like Xybernaut holding plenty of patents on wearable computers and going strong, is there a place for my little one-man company? Any tips for making it on my own? Or is my best hope to hook up with a giant?" I've been waiting for a nice and portable HMD for years, and this has the advantage of not making you look like a Borg reject (although some of you might like that look). HMDs still have a way to go to be practical for everyday use (many still require perfect vision or contacts because they are clumsy with glasses) but I'm sure these drawbacks will be fixed with time.
Start small. Make a few of 'em by hand, make sure they all work, and sell them on EBay. Create a nice business oriented web site and link to it in your EBay listings. Research traditional marketing priciples and apply them. A catchy domain name helps, too.
This is something you could start now for very little $$. Trying to find someone to manufacture these things en masse would be a pain in the ass and likely require a huge investment. I say, make them all by hand for a couple of years until you are so flooded with orders that you just can't keep up. Then take it to the next step.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig
In 1987, I saw an Apple video (taking place in the future, intended to be a nostalgic review of Apple's past) where Woz wore a paper of MacGlasses, complete with tiny disks that inserted into the side of the frame (shades of the MMC/SD crads) - pretty cool, too bad it didn't happen. (The video also had a newsacst where IBM announced their latest main frames were compatible with teh Apple 3000 series mainframe.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
;)
As cool as these kinds of displays are, how do you input data? I mean voice recognition is nice, but there is the problem of privacy, annoying other people and if I recall most people don't think as effectively while speaking outloud (heh kind of obvious).
Solve the man/machine interface and you won't need to make the displays.
-- Button up, your ignorance is showing
and we thought it was bad when all we had to deal with was bad drivers and cell phones...
"Alot of people don't know what they are doing...and most are pretty good at it." -George Carlin
"Why would I do with something like this?"
Hmmm, I have private investigator friends (insurance fraud, they don't get to carry guns and drive Ferraris) that would love a pair of completely innocuous shades that would let them point say... a video camera in a suitcase one way while they are looking elseware.
We actually had a discussion about this the other day, wondering if you could do it wireless and have the antenna and power pack/receiver disguised as a "sports loop".
I would like this same rig because I am just plain a Bad Person ;}
Is there an optometrist on /. who can answer this question? (year right!) Staring at an object so close to your eyeballs can't be good. Wouldn't it strain your eyes a lot more than conventional monitor?
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
With the guy sitting outside with pigeons on the ground and he talks to himself with his sunglasses? I am not sure if the commercal was made by IBM.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
The focal point is actually far in front of you. On my unmodified M1, I have to wear my glasses (I'm near-sighted) to read the display.
--The more you know, the less you know.
My experience wearing a computer was not very comfortable. That 19 inch ViewSonic was a real pain in the neck. The backpack frame holding the Dell Dimension dug into my shoulders. Also, I kept tripping over the keyboard and mouse cables while kicking along the Honda generator.
Also see this paper at wearcam.org.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
While the covert HMD is a really neat spiffy product, the bariers to entry into the hardware market are quite high. In order to compete you'll need to be able to finance production operations (the easy part) and incur substancial legal expenses to insure that none of the many wearable computing patents - mentioned as being held by large players in this market - apply to your hardware, and in the event that some can ce construed to apply, you'll need to handle licensing which will probably be at great expense as well. Furthermore, although the SSSCA will probably not add requirements to your hardware but given the current legislative enviroment, similar legislation that would apply, might appear at any moment. As we all know - the wearable computer maker has not reached mass aceptance yet so without sufficient customer base for the computing hardware, the market for the display hardware - normally some percentage of the market for the compute platform - will be extremely small, regardless of how cool the hardware is. For these reasons I'd recommend considering licensing your hardware to a larger player in the market. While you won't derive nearly as much revenue as if you marketed the product yourself, the revenue you collect will be predictable and will be recieved within a timeframe (and I'm making an assumption about Anubis Enterprises) acceptable for small businesses to maintain solvency.
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Although I think this technology is very cool, I think a key thing missing is the lack of a video camera. While he does mention that this drastically increases the size, it would make this technology MUCH more useful.
There is some usefulness for these sorts of displays (heads-up current information like current stock quotes for example), without some new input device to control such a radically different gadget from what we are used to. Somehow I don't see people 10 years from now running pine off to the side!
While perhaps some kind of hand-pad would be a good short-term compromise (What do people think should be hooked up to one of these, maybe a Handspring Expansion?), the most intuitive and relevant inputs would be voice and/or sight recognition.
Imagine searching a crowd for a friend. You say aloud, "Where's Paul?" and this baby runs a face-pattern recognition algorithm to help you... Just a thought ;-)
It's all about publicity. The first thing you need to do is dupe^H^H^H^Hconvince Slashdot editors that your idea is cool, real, and one VC funding round away from changing the world as they know it.
Kevin Fox
Three questions:
I wear prescription glasses. Would this cause any problems?
Is it possible to use this with a Windows-based computer? (Don't freak out - I have my reasons and they are valid ones)
Can you drop the price a hair?
Seriously, I can foresee a great number of uses for this. I would suggest you go for it, but hire a patent lawyer to do some research for you. There's probably a ton of prior art on this by other companies, but there might be some government research you can base off of.
Anyway, good luck and all.
To celebrate the occasion of my 1000th post, I will post no more forever on Slashdot. Goodbye.
I've been looking at these for awhile now, and decided after following that link to purchase one.
But I got a bit nervous when I checked the security certificate information for their SSL connection like I always do, and noticed it was some other webiste I'd never heard of.
Well that could just be their purchasing service, but just to be safe I decided to call their listed phone number (631) 474-4405 and that turned out to be no longer valid. I didn't call the new number given yet; I know I'm paranoid, and frankly I like it that way, but does anyone know if this is the legit link?
I think it's called "Retinitus Pigmentosa."
A friend of a friend of mine is gradually losing his sight to it. Apparently he can still see just a limited area at the center of his former field of vision. But he still uses the comuter (and watched the WTC collapse).
If the "eye strain" objection cited elsewhere isn't a factor, something like this might at least return a full view of the computer screen (and then, movies? live video feed?
does anyone know if this is the legit link?
Try this. Apparently they're moving right now.
Something I have considered for quite awhile (Back in '94!) is how to get around in virtual worlds. The solution I came up with is by no means 'true VR', but instead aims to be natural. The idea is that you have a platform a couple inches thick by about 8 feet square. (The size could change depending on what is most comfortable for the majority of people.) The platform would then be divided up like this:
/|
<code>
________
|\
| \___/ |
| | | |
| |___| |
| / \ |
|/_____\|
</code>
The user would normally stand on the center square. Each of the divisions ahead, behind, to the left, and to the right represents a direction that the user may wish to go. While in the virtual world, all the user has to do to move forward, is to take a single step forward onto the division in front of him. Similarly the division behind him would cause him to back up. The left and right would strafe.
The left and right could potentially be a 'turn' as it is in most FPS, but I fealt that the turning should rather be handled by the HMD (say via a Boom Tracker) due to the fact that side stepping is a more natural result to taking a step left and moving your head is a more natural 'turn' motion.
Anyway, that was my idea and since I don't have the time to build it, I'm sharing it with everyone here. A tip on building tho. It would probably be easiest to take a cheapo gamepad and strip it out for its interface. That way the electronics and software will be compatible with existing and future programs.
If anyone builds one of these things, I'd love to hear about it. Shoot me a mail at: jNOSPAMbanes@techie.com
Just remove the NOSPAM.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Too bad that leaves him about 3 Million short of covering the design, licencing, legal and production costs.
Rod Taylor
Yes, you were. And you (if you actually paid for your toy and it wasn't company property) paid at least $6k for it.
;)
There are, unfortunately, very few wearable HMD systems that are discrete and don't make you look like a reject from the Collective.
You should also try and figure out a way to get your page posted someplace where it'll be seen by about a quarter-million geeks who've been dreaming of something like this for at least ten years.
Seriously, at $1500 a pop, limited to 320x240 greyscale, and with a 2-month waiting list (and that was presumably before today), I'd guess that you're not quite at the point where every single one of us will buy one, but even so, you probably did just secure at least a few orders. (It'd be interesting if you'd post back in a few days with the results.) The sweet spot would probably be if you could hit 640x480 and at least 8-bit color without going too far over $600.
Still, this is already pretty nice -- I'd call myself "tempted", but not quite "seriously tempted", as it is; definitely interested enough to keep an eye on your progress. The price point is probably more important than the features: I'd be more likely to buy it as it is if you got the price down than at the current price if you got the features up.
Good luck.
David Gould
main(i){putchar(340056100>>(i-1)*5&31|!!(i<6)<< 6)&&main(++i);}
The picture for wearable fans is getting steadily better. Consider an Ipaq with wireless package, pcmcia video card, IBM 1Gb Microdrive, a Twiddler2, and one of these HMDs. The specs to hook up a Twiddler2 are already out there. You run linux from here and you're all set.
:)
Well, maybe you might want another battery
Sure it has a redundant screen. I used to hate that idea. But now I realize that it just means I can still use the machine in situations where the wearable is not appropriate (like the beach) or when I've already taken it off.
Every year these little handhelds get more powerful and the peripheral market around them gets richer. I think this is the critical mass that will finally allow the normal (non-EE) person to put together usable and powerful wearables. The HMD is really the missing link.
Just as an aside, I wrote the author about modifying my own M1 to his first-gen sunglasses hack some time ago, and he refused to do the job (for money, I mean) because he felt that his current design required too much "tuning" for each person's ergos. I guess he's licked that problem, and it's nice to know that some people really aren't just in it for the money. He's a good guy.
Ok, it's getting late. Will stop there.
* gameshow, for those that don't know it.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
How about if you could figure a way to work this with a PDA? The resolution and lack of color would seem to work well with a Palm OS guy. You'd have to work on the interface a bit, but it'd be relatively cool to have your address book handy right where you could see it. You could scribble notes to yourself while walking down the street and what not. HMD+PDA+Expedia = easy navigation, or a quick car crash. (You get my point, though.) Combine your HMD with the black and white Clie's with the jog dial, and you may be able to sell some. Especially to those tech-crazy Japanese.
Where the wind blows, the tumbleweed goes.
glasses is as discussed above eye strain.
Imagine an standard but small LCD display in
front of your eye. To focus on it, is the same
as focusing on any object 2 cm away from you
eye, downright impossible unless your extremely
short sighted. This is easy to fix you put a
lens in front of the LCD so that to correctly everything
is focused at infinity or maybe 20 feet away,
i.e. your
eye has to focus as if the image was at infinity or 20 feet. But this is still is not good enough.
The eye (and brain) is built to be continously
focusing on different objects at different depths,
and keeping it locked at in single focal depth for
very long produces eye strain. Worse still is that
if your viewing a 3d image, the parallex clues the brain gets to what distance an object is
at, have nothing to with what depth the eye has
to focus at, and this could cause further problems
with eye strain, that you wouldn't normally get
just by staring somewhere for a long period of time.
True when you look around a room you don't tend to
notice objects coming in and out of focus, but this is
in fact because the Brain uses the eye
to update the model of your surroundings and it
is this model you normally perceive.
Until someone can design a system that has
different virtual objects at different focal depths, eye strain will painfully prevent such
displays becoming popular consumer items.
Although there is no "sales" page on their site, this is normal for a product in prototype stage which costs several thousand dollars. If you send them an email, they will be happy to inform you that their glasses are available, and range in price from $1500 to $2500.
A year or two ago, Newsweek did a feature on eBooks.
The chief lament was that they were more incovenient than real books.
Elsewhere in the same issue, there was a story about computer displays embedded in (albeit oversized at the time) eyeglasses.
EUREKA!!!!!!!!
Ummm...would you like the moon with that too?
...use your imagination
Respectfully, this is WAY beyond what the state of the art can support right now, or in the foreseeable future.
It's a chicken-and-egg problem...the masses won't be interested in wearables until they are more or less equivalent to desktops. But until the masses are interested, the major players won't devote major funding to getting wearables up to desktop level. Which means that only hobbyists and small businesses will do it. Which means that progress will be very slow.
On the other hand, I think you may be overestimating what you really need. Instead of thinking "What do I need from a wearable in order to do the things that I do on my desktop?" try thinking "What can I do on my wearable that I can't do on my desktop?"
Here are some suggestions:
* have a combined MP3 player/watch/note taker/scheduler/data bank/voice-over-IP cell phone/email/pager, all in one go-anywhere device
* have a personal electronic assistant that helps you remember things based on your current surroundings and other cues (check out the Remembrance Agents Page for more details)
* broadcast video of what you're seeing back to your home basestation. If you get mugged, you have a video of the guy's face. If you see a beautiful sunset, you can watch it (admittedly on a small screen) with your sweetie later.
* mapping software that updates in realtime, showing you where you are and providing you detailed instructions on how to get to your destination.
*
Dave Storrs
(Tekmage:) The focal point is actually far in front of you..
As a bonus with these displays, make the focus point of the text vary slowly over time, so your eyes aren't always set to a particular distance.
Hey, it's a selling point too.. Exercise for your eyes, while you work!
Seriously, it seems pretty obvious that it would be very beneficial for your eyes to not have to be set to the same focus all day, like it may be right now, if your work involves staring at your monitor all day long.
4 or 5 years ago a company called Virtual Vision had sunglass based consumer displays. They nearly went under when they found there was no market for them.
They are still around and they do mostly vertical market stuff now and they've become a subsidiary of eMagin which makes super small LCD displys (like 1280x1024 in less than 1 inch)
Since the sunglass thing they also make Borg like half sunglass attachements. The uses I've heard of are for example, a surgeon can wear one and have all your vital signs in his view (or just at a glance to the side of his forward view) at all times so instead of having to look up at all those machines hanging over the operating table he can concentrate on the surgery.
Another I've heard of is supposedly it takes a truckload of manuals to cover maintainence on commerical airliners. Well, they made a belt worn wireless networked computer connected to one of their displays with voice input so instead of having to bring the truck over and search through the paper manuals while trying to fix something the mechanic could just call it up on the display he's wearing and glance at it while he works on the problem area.
PS: My Father works for that company.
So, some punk ass kid gets one of these things for his birthday. Its got a camera, OCR software, and a computer algebra package. All of a sudden he starts pulling A's in his math classes without learning a thing...
If these things get mass produced, and I hope they do, they will probably be treated by academia like the origonal pocket calculators. If you get caught with one, you get expelled. Watching this industry mature is going to be very interesting. Its just one step closer to the cyberpunk lifestyle in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. And damn, it is cool.
Kan jeg få en pils, vær så snill?
On /. a few weeks ago there was a link to the wearable computers guy at MIT who's been doing the wearable borg thing for like 10 years--he had software that would show someone's name superimposed next to their face... combine that with these low profile glasses and you have something for forgetful people...think, no more:
"Hi, I'd like you to meet Anna"
"My name's Arlene."
"oh, err...."
..they just take silly-looking sunglasses from (insert leading vendor here) and pretend there's a screen on the inside. (Think M:I-2.)
That said, the goal here does seem to be glasses where it's impossible to detect the display technology, even with untinted lenses. I can't wait to see a fourth- or fifth-generation display from this guy mass-marketed for a reasonable price. (I'd pay the price of a high-quality 19" CRT, but not much more.)
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
How about this:
A pair of display glasses kept next to the copy machine. When it jams in location D2, the user puts them on and an animation of how to remove the jam is superimposed on the actual mechanism. The same applies to any kind of mechanical task (think fixing an automobile, or the advanced chapters of the Kama Sutra).
Or this:
A firefigter eners a burning building; it's smoky and nothing can be seen. Radar maps the suroundings and shows a wireframe model on his heads up display. (Actually, I think they have things already which can see through smoke, but perhaps they could be made lighter). Or maybe containers of hazardous materials would have a transponder that would alert the firefighter to its presence, display a red dot at its location, and show its material safety data sheet on request.
Or this:
A headset that gives a surgeon a heads up view of her patient's vital signs, displays plans she has made for complex operations, and integrates with advance sensors to give her the equivalent of x-ray vision.
Or this:
A pair of glasses that would allow people identifying rare plants or insects to compare specimens to the taxonomic databases. They could even be integrated with a video microscope so the user doesn't have to bend of a stereo microscope all day.
Personally, I'd like to get rid of computer monitors. They're an ergonomic disaster, and scaling them up in size creates all kinds of space and energy problems. But I could probably think of a hundred other applications for them in every day life. I believe computer enhanced reality has a huge potential.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
You know those situations where you meet someone and they recognise you but you haven't a clue who they are... easy. Face recognition software and it prints up in your sunglasses... 'that's your mother'.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
yeah and what happens when the government starts realizing that they can record everything that you see, and hackers start to grab in and record what you're seeing too? Dunno if I like the implications of that, especially in wake of recent events.
If God gave us curiosity
Not my idea, but I have never seen an implementation of it, so I wrote a how-to a long while back on building it:
Cheap VR Issue 3
Basically, it works like a joypad, only larger, where you "lean" in the direction you want to "go".
BTW, don't bother emailing the address contained in the issue - it don't work anymore, instead, email to phoenixgarage addy...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
No, I don't know if anyone has, nor have I myself. It is one of those "back burner" projects (actually, I have been waiting forever to somehow create or buy a cheap sourceless head tracking system to create this - I suppose a boom mounted tracker could be used, maybe).
You are right on the calibration issues. I suppose if you could hook up some variable resistors or strain gauges, and mount the thing on springs, then you could measure the tilt that way, and provide a calibration loop in the software. Step on, calibrate center, then use.
Or, how about this - between two round pieces of plywood or steel, space a few piezo elements spaced around, in a circle, about a third of the way in from the edge (so you have plywood round-piezo elements-plywood round kind of sandwich). A thin bead of silicone caulking around the edge and near the center might provide a little support and prevent slippage. Then, as you tilt and "mash" the piezo elements, varing voltages would be generated, which could be sensed and used to determine direction. It would be a thinner platform, possibly even easier to construct. Or, do the same with a single plywood, steel or plastic round, but epoxy the elements on the 8 directions around the edge, then epoxy short steel, wood or plastic "legs" - thinest of all if used on a hard floor...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
No, I don't know if anyone has, nor have I myself. It is one of those "back burner" projects
:-)
:-)
Just like mine, eh? The power glove was as far as I ever got.
Then, as you tilt and "mash" the piezo elements, varing voltages would be generated, which could be sensed and used to determine direction.
That could work, but I think we would end up with the same problem as the joysticks of yore. IIRC, most of them used piezo elements to detect joystick movement in liu of a (then expensive) analog to digital converter. The problem of course was that they needed to be very specifically calibrated (and as they wore out, recalibrated). With an "assitant processor" one could handle it automatically, but I don't think it would make a very good direct interface.
You could use gyros, but I think that would be more difficult and would probably require much of the same calibration. Probably the best way would be to put the switch on the base board, put a spring around the sensor, and attach a long piece of wood (or whatever) to the top board and also place it inside the spring. With a gap of say 1/2 inch to an inch you could probably have a reasonable reliable setup. The down side of course is that you would need a lot more "give" than your previous design, but calibration wouldn't be a problem.
Of course, I could be talking out of my ass.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
All original PC joysticks used a timing system of a capacitor/potentiometer circuit that timed based on discharge rates (or something similar - there is more than enough docs on the net about this - look up "joystick programming" on google, heck, I might even have a link on the site), not piezo elements.
That isn't to say such elements were never used, but it certainly was far from common. Switches would be better to use, and your idea for a spring system might be workable. Some robotics projects have used similar systems for "whisker" sensors...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon