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Next Generation Xybernaut Wearable
shanenewsom sent in linkage
to a story running on the BBC
which talks about
the new Xybernaut Poma. A little light on the specs,
although the headmounted screen is 640x480 and it runs WinCE. But it
really does look like the first practical wearable. It should be
available in March. Update: 01/21 18:52 GMT by T : Reader Eureses points out that the display is actually 800x600 rather than 640x480.
Wouldn't a PDA and some of those iGlasses be a lot cheaper? Who says you have to use it while walking down the street? As long as it's small and portable.
I belong to the ______ generation.
I saw an interview with a head honcho from Xybernaut a month or two ago on the Space channel. They showed this thing, and I'm almost positive he said it would run either Windows CE or Linux.
IIRC, though, it was still priced pretty high(several thousand dollars).
Barclay family motto:
Aut agere aut mori.
(Either action or death.)
The article says the resolution is 800x600 and not, as the snippet on slashdot says, 640x480.
There's a little more in the article at news.com
Looking for any old 8-bit Heathkit/Zenith software/hardware - http://heathkit.garlanger.com
Debian already runs on the SH4. The SH7751V they seem to have chosen has a 0.9GFLOP FPU so it's capable of pretty decent Divx encodes and decodes. This unit could make for a pretty decent portable DVR.
Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur
We had a couple of their products in our lab - I think they were the MA TC type. These ran Windows 98 and they were huge hulking beasts that could hardly be called wearable. Anyway, my experience with the display was that it wasn't too bright. In fact, they projected on to a half silvered mirror so that you could supposedly see through it. The people in my lab found the half silvered mirror to be a bad idea because you couldn't really concentrate on the screen or the environment very well. It was especially difficult to try to keep track of a mouse cursor when it was half transparent and things were moving in the background. To get any use out of it at all you basically had to go stare at a blank wall. Don't know if this version also has a transparent display - hope they actually ran some user studies.
Never underestimate the power of fiber.
other single-eye head-mounted displays i've played with have been quite easy to see. no winking needed. they're generally designed so that the light from the screen comes in perfectly parallel so it's like looking at an infinately large screen that is infinitely far away; very easy for your eyes to focus on. there are plenty of people like Steve Mann or Greg Priest-Dorman who have been wearing them for *years* without problems. furthermore, the single eye displays tend to have fewer problems with making people dizzy.
for a real wearable that you're actually wearing 16 hours a day, the most problematic thing is usually the comfort of the physical device. ordinary glasses get uncomfortable after awhile; glasses with bulky LCD display units attached to them get really uncomfortable if they don't fit *perfectly*.
Smokey the Bear says, "Strip mining prevents forest fires!"
Moreover, you don't have to be an ergonomic engineering genius to figure out that the design they have is not going to stay where you put it. Even one ounce eyeglasses need to have nose braces to keep them from falling off. Besides that, without semi-transparency (like these guys), the device just blinds you -- fine for a desk but it can't help mobility any. (Ever tried working on an old style microscope for several hours?)
Incidentally, according to an old CNN article, Xybernaut cut a deal with microvision to distribute head-mounted laser displays within the year. Since the article is old, maybe its not happening anymore, but it would seem to be a good reason to wait on these devices improving a little.
_________________
Here is a link to a previous /. post on this thing from August. A little more info in the links too.
Affordable Wearables May Arrive By Christmas
Very true. Especially since this is a single eye device. I would think anything longer than a couple of minutes would result in a major headache. Of course, I haven't tried one, but from experiences with telescopes and gun sites using both eyes while focusing through a monocle tends to cause eye fatigue quite quickly, at least for me. Closing one eye would help but would defeat the primary purpose of the device.
Probably the least intrusive approach would be a direct projection on the retina, but who's going to buy a device that projects light into your eye??? This would have a similar effect as eye "floaties" which are visible but can be easily ignored since you can't technically focus on them and, being so small, are nearly transparent...
Linux is available on Xybernaut's flagship product, the MAV. The MAV is a full function PC.
The Poma (or Hiatchi WIA) will only run WIndows CE.