Slashdot Mirror
Augmented Reality: Enhanced Perception
Webratta writes: "Can you imagine wearing glasses or goggles that, when looking at a person, a built-in display would tell you everything you wanted to know about that person? According to an article in Popular Science the day of cyborg-like enhanced perception could be closer than we imagined. Just imagine the privacy concerns stemming from this..."
The privacy concerns depend on where the information comes from. If it comes from a centralized database, then yes. But, if the user (the owner of the goggles) chooses the information to assign to a person then there aren't any big concerns. For instance, I could choose to display their name, birthday, wedding anniversary, and their favorite restaurant. It would be information that I already know, this would just allow me to access it more readily. In a way, it would act like a face-recognizing entry in my PDA, brining up all of the information I've already collected about that person.
That could make dating so much more reliable for us geeks. Just think what it would be like if you already knew that she shared the same interests, etc. You could probably have built in web access to these things too and check out her online profile. Oh wait... we're probably already sitting in front of our computers looking at her profile before we attempt dating anyway :-)
Follow me
Walk down the street, look at the world. This is reality.
You've lost me.. what is this thing? Is it new? </geek>
http://twitter.com/onion2k
MIT has been doing this for years.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
I have this image of a dark and cold future, where you can simply look at a friend, a co-worker, a stranger. Then by merely making a certain microgesture with your eyes, can instantly bring up a list of what kind of porn they download.
I pray I don't live to see it.
Personally I think it would be more of a social intrusion, as in "ugh...it's that white faced geek again". Sorta like when wireless ethernet hit my old college campus (cmu.edu) and people started checking email in the middle of a movie (as in, an annoyingly bright view of someone's window manager).
Nonetheless it has its cool factor, although I would look at some of the more productive applications.
You *know* that one of the first things that they'll do if this stuff ever becomes popular is to sell virtual advertising space. Adverts won't just be static billboards. They'll jump out at you.
Deleted
Anyone remember Snow Crash? Seriously, there are loads of uses for this though, not just for secirity officers, tourists etc. I'd be well up for using it just walking around town.
If everyone is carrying wirless devices, pumping out whatever info they want to passers by... this could remove the need to *talk* to strangers!
It would be pretty cool though - all the advantages of meeting and chatting online, but with the advantage of being in the *real* world.
One of the more interesting uses was allowing someone else to temporarily take control of your display - no more damn powerpoint slides at meetings!
And imagine the military uses - targeting computers built into your field of vision, zoom in with enhanced vision, etc.
Someone should change these into the Simpson's beer goggles. That way when I look at someone, I see everything I want, not everything I need to know.
I really hate Dan Patrick.
Is anyone else sick of reading sentences like "the day of could be closer than we imagined"? When does it actually work out in the end that the technology is available shortly after one of these statements?
It's kinda like back in 1990 hearing "the days of high-definition television are closer than you imagined!". In reality, they're working out to be farther than I imagined...
--- witty signature
What you really want is for the other person's head up display to be monitoring their iris. If they look at you and their pupil dilates, when it adds an entry into their database to this effect. If you then look at them, your head up display displays a set of red cross-hairs for a possible target...
Thinking about it, this could create something of a Cupid's Arrow Effect. Say you are looking at someone in a room and the lights go out - instantly you end up targetted in their display.
Maybe a more reliable system would be needed, but it sure would be interesting.
otoh, how attractive can a person be wearing goggles?
TJ
Owl tried to think of something wise to say, but couldn't.
Reminded me of HUD technologies (with AWACS support), where when a plane's radar picks up another plane, the HUD shows its location with a square, and various other information appears, generated from the AWACS feed, or other embedded signals in the radar (for friend/foe recognition etc.)
There's an interesting article in New Scientist about similar technology, used to "supplement" what your eyes can see. A guy from the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics in Rostock has come up with a "Virtual Showcase" that has the target artefact in, and then with the aid of special goggles the wearer sees a superimposed image, with a likely representation of what the artefact may have looked like originally.
You can find the link herei cl e.jsp?id=99991959&sub=Hot%20Stories)
(http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/tech/art
jer
We may be human, but we're still animals
- Steve Vai
XRay Glasses? Sure, they cost a couple bucks in the back of old comic books
Seriously, I wear beer goggles when I need corrected vision, though after last night, I fear I'll need the beer to quell a broken heart. And by the way, I'm already imagining how this could lead to the great-granddaddy of all time Invasion of Privacy, or just plain old You Sick Pervert tiffs.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
But she could also find out that you're a geek and run for her life.
Oh, wait. They can spot that easily already now...
Of course, I'm also still waiting for video phones. The best part of that scene? At the end when the show the AT&T logo and say something like "This call brought to you by AT&T". By 2015, it'll probably be "This call brought to you by AOL Time Warner Sony Viacom Verizon".
He's almost completely the father of wearable computing. He wore a pair of glasses and a "keyboard" interface everywhere he goes, and worked for MIT media lab. People who have met him say he seemed more intelligent than he actually is, because his vision sensors send information back to the lab which he can route to others for aid in identification, and he asked questions on the LAN IRC (I don't think they actually use that protocol) and got the answers from the minds of MIT. Its as though he can answer any question.
His page is at the University of Toronto now, and those glasses he's wearing are exactly the ones that I mentioned - at least, they're the fourth draft of the ones I mentioned.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I've been able to buy these glasses from Marvel Comics for decades now.
--Lawrence Lessig for Congress!
Ah, another great idea in science-fiction coming to life in front of my eyes.
I love when this happens, and it seems to happen more and more often.
Paul K.
...to be a gargoyle.
--trb
Only if they don't deploy it first, and better. I can just imagine the first article on slashdot "Converted pr0n Specs With Linux Showing Anime" No wonder we're geeks!
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Can you imagine wearing glasses or goggles that, when looking at a person, a built-in display would tell you everything you wanted to know about that person?
What about the stuff you don't want to know? Here are some things I wouldn't like to know about someone I walk by in the local mall:
Bisexual, but won't admit it
Enjoys viewing squirrel porn scenes
Works for Microsoft
Has severe case of explosive diarrhea
Etc...
The speed of time is one second per second.
This is basically what Gibson's glasses did in _Virtual Light_. Not really a new idea. jim
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
Not to be negative, but one of the reasons I stopped subscribing to Popular Science was exactly because of articles like this. After many years of seeing them sensationalize technologies that never really took off, or after careful examination never even seemed to have had the ability to, I think I started to realize that they're almost like a techie tabloid. Flying cars, humans on Mars, universal vaccines - these items shouldn't be cover page news despite being interesting and worthwhile. On one hand, I realize you need to sell the magazine, but on the other, I prefer Wired a little more which has plenty of tech stories but seems to be a little more grounded despite the occassional "computers will rule us" or "cyborgs on the loose tomorrow" stories.
Please subscribe to see the more insightful version of th
Every other damn story on here ends with, "but what about the privacy concerns?". Is that all people have to worry about now? Yeah, the Microsoft thing is done with, they're bad, we know it, lets move on to whining about something else. Oh yeah, privacy, that'll keep us going for a year or two. Sheesh.
As several people have mentioned, such goggles/glasses were featured in Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash and Diamond Age. Certainly, this technology could have many benefits. Think about the advantages of swift access to personal data in the courtroom and for police, or about how quick access to lab procedures, online resources, and other data would help scientists. Of course, if this technology is developed, however, it will not be possible to confine it to scientists, lawyers, policemen, and such. Others - spammers, perverts, criminals, etc - will get their hands on the technology, and the result will be intrusion on our privacy ranging from the merely annoying to the outright dangerous. Certainly, the technology is cool, and potentially very useful to many people, but there is, unfortunately, also a great potential for abuse.
Can't you just ask the person for such details ?
The problem, IMHO, is that this may reduce the communication between people.
Also, how exhaustive is the collected info ?
Maybe this could be useful for some guardians willing to authentify incoming visitors but else, well, I don't perceive this invention, however breathtaking, technically speaking, as a step toward the right direction which is making people happy to co-exist.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
I've had an eye (pardon the pun) on his work for years. I always wondered if I'd be able to build a wearable and use it on a daily basis; now that I'm working in .edu land again, there's more potential for this to happen.
:)
http://www.wearcam.org is (or at least, was) a good place to start looking for information on his projects. (Look here for an interesting screen shot of his view of the world, text interface and all.) There's also http://eyetap.org- a site actually described on wearcam as "a more organized and more desktop computer friendly site". Mann's older sites are not very "prettified" with nice tables and formatting; they're a fairly random pile of information, which probably woul;dn't look bad in a text-only browser, like what he'd have been using
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
...the z80 assembly listings appearing in the Terminator's sights...
How will they make such information compact enough to be useful and not dangerous (I don't want to have 2KB oftext to read while driving) ?
Trolling using another account since 2005.
An addition to Megan's Law would provide the info that a particular person was a convicted sex offender. With such a technology, it would allow me to decide whether to let my kid run randomly through the park on a Sunday afternoon... or maybe I should move onto another park?
i bet youd have figured this out by yourself, but a link is always nice ;-)
So check out the
official page
Motorists could put these things to especially good use. A Heads-up display like in fighter planes could point out road hazards and relative vehicle speeds. Instead of a rear-view mirror, a semi-transparent projection of the view from the rear could be called up with a little press on the steering wheel. In conditions of low-visibility, the HUD could enhance the lane dividing lines and point out other traffic indicators. Of course, maybe we'll just have cars that drive themselves before we get that far.
Shockwave Flash movies are the greatest thing to happen to non-sequitur humor since Japan.
Boeing has been using augmented reality for some time now to help the people who are wiring up the new airplanes. The glasses project the relevant portion of the wiring diagram over the section that the worker is looking at.
All of the various privacy concerns are unfounded at the moment. The large challenge with any AR system is to figure out what you're looking at. For it to work with people you would either need some kind of facial recognition system built-in or the person would have to be willingly broadcasting a location AND identity signal to be used by such a system.
Personally, I think the best Sci Fi example of this stuff is in California Vodoo Game. In this case Niven and Barnes used AR to deal with the fact that the previously expected Star Trek hologram technology hasn't been able to catch up to "reality" yet. The neat thing about that was that you had the combination of AR and MMORPG technology blended together to make LARP'ing really fun. (If you couldn't decipher all of those acronyms than you probably wouldn't be interested anyway.)
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
I Imagine that the interface would have to be something familiar that most geeks can deal with.
I suggest a gaming interface like Doom. There was that admin tool for killing off zombie processes. Something similar could be used to symbolically represent the people you meet. Bill Gates As Satan, for Example.
Of course, you would have different patches depending on your tastes and opinions.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
This has been a popular thing in cyberpunk fiction. Gibson's Virtual Light was centered around just such a set of glasses... and I remember the gargoyles in Stephenson's Snow Crash had the same things... laser would scan your retina from a distance, reference all your information from a database...
Wow, am I a geek or what...
I've been laughing at Popular Science since I was a kid at the barber shop (and this was over 25 years ago, kids). Without fail, every article has an "artists conception" of some outrageous new technological innovation that's just around the corner! -- super vaccines, military of the future, cruise ships the size of cities, rocket planes, and so on. The only thing they seem to leave out is ESP.
I'm sure many of the stories really do represent new applications for halfway-grounded-in-reality technology, but they extend it so far beyond reality. It'd be amusing to take 20 year old popular science cover stories and see what percentage even remotely resemble developed technologies.
This device could certainly put a new spin on the old addage "undressing someone with your eyes".
Seriously though, I do have to wonder how long it would take before someone ends up making an analyzer to do just that considering the porn industry in this country.
(I have also been suspicious about those little mini-cameras. My paranoia says that 25% are probably ending up in places noone would ever want them.)
When you're walking down the street, an arrow shows you how to get to your destination. No need to pull out your PDA when you get lost! It could also be a way to do 3d videoconferencing...
Can you make it scroll some commodore 64 assembler code to complement that information.
on the last page where it says this stuff can replace ads and billboards with waterfalls and stuff... Im going to replace everything with naked women....
We might get an escalation of the spyware-adblocker war.
You should visit Nooface as you'd be interested by this article which is about Augmented reality Quake
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Privacy concerns in general, it's a losing battle. Personally I don't really care if you can find out what my preferences are, what I really want though is for the SPAM etc that comes my way be truly worth it. Could you imagine if little stories popped into your display that you actually wanted to read. Who would be annoyed if slashdot-esque information came and found you?
"Can you imagine wearing glasses or goggles that, when looking at a person, a built-in display would tell you everything you wanted to know about that person?"
They're called " beer goggles"....7 or 8 pints of Hefeweizen and I know all I ever need to know about that woman. All I don't know is "why I never realized she was hot before".
Now, if only they could invent something to avoid the Coyote Ugly Syndrome of the next morning...like some sort of shoe-horn or spatula. I'm sick of having to gnaw my arm off to escape the bear trap.
(Score -5. Chauvanistic Jackcass)
I think AR stuff is pretty cool. Those sunglasses in Virtual Light, Gargoyles in Snow Crash, it's a pretty darn useful information tool, as long as the information is useful and trustworthy. To that end, I feel that corporations should be kept as far away from this as possible. Otherwise AR will be a mass of ads, spam and lies.
I think a link to a personal datasource is the way to go, with various connections to trusted information providers. If the map company decides to put ads in its building descriptions, disconnect from their service and join with one who doesn't. You should be able to put on your goggles and see NOTHING AT ALL, and add only the stuff you want.
Personal datasources might link to other people's sources, in a kind of collaberative system that allows feedback ("you liked that bar? It SUCKED!") and filtering (browsing the world at +5 to avoid the trolls and goatse.cx).
In order to further clean up the datastream, rocksolid specs for different types of data should be established, probably using XML. No executables either, that way people can't stick Flash animations or viruses in their location descriptions.
I wonder if use of these kind of info-tools will result in weakened memory, sense of direction, etc... not to mention the social awkwardness of people staring off into space while they process the latest blip.
Oh, kinda off-topic: I googled and found what looks to be the full text of Virtual Light by William Gibson.
Privacy concerns aside, isn't there another concern to the story.... safety.
Think about it: You're walking down the street, too distracted by all the information popping up in your display to pay attention to your immediate surroundings. You accidentally step out into the crosswalk, not noticing the traffic heading towards you at a high rate of speed.....
How about wearing this contraption while driving? Cell phones, passengers, radio controls, etc, are enough distraction for the driver, do we really need another distraction?
Think For Yourself. Question Authority.
(Much older than Gibson)... there was a device people would wear on their foreheads... I think the first version showed whether you were lying or telling the truth... then a second version also showed whether or not you were attracted to the person you were talking to...
I don't remember the plot device that explained why people voluntarily wore the things.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
They predicted flying cars for years, too.
.. well, it takes some input
searches for something based on that input
displays some results from the search
hmmmmmmm
Googles anyone?
i'll shut up now.
How long before someone writes a plugin that removes clothing for selected women?
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
My second sentence should be "...then it adds and entry..."
Sorry. I did preview, honest.
Owl tried to think of something wise to say, but couldn't.
I turn my head when a knockout enters the room and am presented with:
Age: 23
Height: 5'9"
Weight: 120lbs
Measurements: 38-24-36
Status: Single - 3 months
Favorite Drink: Anything with kick
Residence: 1 bdr apt - 3 blocks away
Warning : Syphillis!!!
Shoot... well, it was a good daydream while it lasted...
~ now you know
There's no mention of what I consider to be the most interesting possibility: the ability to "see" the non-visible parts of the spectrum. With something like this you could have sensors to detect infrared, ultraviolet, microwave, etc., and display it as an overlay. Depending on what you were doing you could adjust what parts of the spectrum were shown in your display. That would so totally rock. I can think of tons of uses for it, and technically is seems more feasible than most of the apps described in the article.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
As corny as it may have been, I think you must be some sort of marketing genius. Of course the royalties paid to Google might add up on that one...
~ now you know
According to an article in Popular Science
/. be a little above that?
Does anyone really need to read further than that to know that the technology is all pie-in-the-sky bullshit?
Quoting from Popular Science is like quoting from The Enquirer. Shouldn't
Why are you letting these clowns ruin our country?
Ah, so next time I get caught staring at a cow-orker's tits, I can just say "hey, I was just checking my schedule!"
Or even better:
[mind control]computer, record visual
ULTRA CLOSEUUUUPP WOOOOAAAAAHHHHHH.
end recording, save for later.
combine this, the mechanized exoskeletons that the military is working on, and their spider-silk armor and suddenly all our Marines become Robocops. The REALLY amazing thing is that ALL those pieces are being worked on and have ALL been demonstrated at some level... The marines are talking AR for special forces by 2003 and all troups by 2005. I wonder if they'll have their exoskeletons working by then... A soldier equipped like that could probably take on "normal" soldiers 100-to-1 or 1000-to-1 and win hands down.
That's indeed interesting, but alcohol companies would probaly lobby against since any girl could look like Cindy Crawford, even when you wake up.
Buy a Nintendo DS Lite
remember the scenes showing Arnold's augmented-reality HUD?
I'm sure this idea was bandied about long before that even, it's just the earliest one I thought of off the top of my head.
..when a script kiddie h4x0rs youre wearable?
me : hey there, fancy going for a drink
her : sure, just wait a sec..
BEEP BEEP
her : OH MY GOD, THATS DISGUSTING **runs away**
finally, someone to blame for low pulling power!
I'll just grab my fake beard and wig, and then no computer'll be able to recognize me at all.
If you want to see enahnced perception in action, take one of your friends out to a club. Keep giving him well liquor until the enhanced perception kicks in. You will know it has arrived when he says "Dude, I think that stripper likes me."
Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball(TM)
A bunch of people are concerned about privacy. OK, fine. But what about the potential for annoying pop-up ads? Pop-up and banner ads are bad enough on the web - I sure as hell don't need them popping up 18 hours a day while I walk around in my daily (real) life.
Read my keyboard review.
I want Filtered Reality!
Think about it. Why should only those who are willing to suffer the effects of shrooms for days, or LSD for years, be the ones who get to see bleeding walls or leaking phones?! With a helmet around your head that filters your video and audio input (err, vision and hearing), you could have all the trippy hallucinations you wanted, when you wanted! Is that girl really wearing a purple elephant on her necklace, or would she be offended if you tried to feed it a peanut? Are there really bugs crawling into your skin? Better ask the piano!
What a time to be alive!
Man, I don't know about the people you see driving, but the LAST thing I want is a heads up display to be giving them more blinky things to focus on.
Hell, and out of state license plate can draw enough attention with some of the people I ride with to create a road hazard.
"Look, what state is that license plate from. On that that big Explorer over there..." {{Sound of loud explosion and screaming}}
7. What we cannot speak about we must pass over in silence.
Instead of just Equifax and the IRS getting complete knowledge about our daily lives, everyday citizens would regain some of that control.
Jono
Now if you see a tease you can have a computer validate that she is a tease.
I mean, haven't you ever watched VH1's "Pop-Up Video" program before ? hehehe... sounds like fun !
Imagine
EP User looking at potential employee at interview, pop-up reveals...
"According to DoubleClick Sam here surfs pron 3-4 hours a days since he was layed off"
"His hobbies include knitting, Linux, reading SlashDot..."
"Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech."--Benjamin Franklin
I can easily imagine someone walking into a lamp-post because their vision is blocked by a "blue screen of death"... talk about adding insult to injury
IIRC, Boeing used (or tried out) an AR system several years back for the purpose of wiring the electrical systems of their planes. The wiring harnesses in the planes consist of several miles of wiring - all over the place.
From what I understood, the idea was to get the tech to the point where a worker could simply look at the connection points, and the AR system would show what wires went where, via an overlay. I suppose some kind of tracking system would have been needed, to position the overlay properly (and from what I have been following lately, that problem is still unsolved in general AR/VR applications - but getting there rapidly). The whole idea was to eliminate the need for a worker to stop what he is doing, exit the frame, pick up the book of diagrams, leaf through them, and figure out what goes where "abstractly". With such an AR system, production and install times would be lowered - I am sure it could be applied to a number of other areas as well (including repair after the plane is built).
Not sure where they went with it - if it was a limited trial, how well it worked, whether the equipment was up to task (I tend to think it wasn't), how workers liked it, etc. By the lack of talk on it, I tend to think it wasn't too successful - but the idea gives an example of what really can be done with AR.
What is funny about all of this is that the first "real" VR style system (ie, the "Sword of Damaecles" (sp) by Ivan Sutherland in the late 1960's) was an AR system, complete with see-through optics and "wire-frame" virtual objects...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Hmmm? ;-)
Next, please!
8==8 Bones 8==8
Wow, another platform for 1-2-1 marketing!
free the mallocs!
am i the only one who find it a bit...strange and unnerving that the handful of people mentioned at the end of the article who wear wearables 100% of the time are called "borg"?
suddenly thos wires popping out of the head don't seem quite so sci-fi anymore...
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
... I just want to be able to type stuff into 2 databses just by thinking the words -- IMDB and Google.
:-)
-- oh and page up & down. Is that too hard ? Can I have it embedded please?
Let me know when its in beta
Winton
http://www.headmap.com
I found out about this page while reading one of their awesome little magazines (I think they call them books) at some hippy's house party.
Great stuff ... worth a read
our written thoughts are gifts to our future selves
Its ok, i don't need any special equipment to look at someone and know everything about them, i am phsyco, i mean psychic... i can read people's minds... comes in handy with the women ;-)
--JonnyBlog
I already wear glasses that, when looking at a person tell me everything I want to know about that person.
That's right- nothing.
Maybe I'm not a people person.
graspee
Since the camera will likely have good infrared capability (too allow augmented night vision), you should be able to see right through many types of clothing, especially those no tan lines swimsuits that are made of a fabric that intentionally allows supposedly non-visible light to pass. If you added one of the new wideband radar devices, you ought to be able to analyze their insides as well. Or with one of the artificial nose devices being tested in labs today, you could easily pick out the most aroused person in a crowd.
This is an interesting question, because I'm just now reading "Technogenesis" by Syne Mitchell. It's all about the future world (2100's) where everyone is "connected" to the Net by devices that interact directly with the body's central nervous system. It's a chilling tale of what happens when everyone can know anything instantly. Lying is pretty much history, but so is any semblance of privacy. Have a look. It's a good book. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0451458648/ qid=1015040214/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-0878689-76113 19
this is some bomb future stuff, it will be brought to you by jahshaka soon... www.jahshaka.com
A pair of glasses like these were the central item of William Gibson's novel Virtual Light, which is kinda bizzare cause I read it last week.
I personally would be extremely worried about something like this, for example someone posted somthing about dating how she(he) could know so much about you just by the sight of you (althoug for most geeks she wouldn't really need the glasses IMHO) and so could corporations, etc. However if it's possible to pull it off efficiently I really think it would be done, and fast considering many major corporations would be very interested in somthing like this, not to mention the goverment and law enforcement agencies...
"Uhhh... yeah... that's it..." ilsundalX lenparr@yahoo.com
Yuck. Can't read it, can't resize it, and print doesn't work. To: feedback@popsci.com, webmaster@popsci.com1 2543,190327-1,00.html, was very difficult to get through. The type in the main text was too small and I was unable to change it with my browser settings. The "print this" option, unlike format-for-print options on other newspaper and magazine sites (e.g., http://www.sciam.com) did not format the whole article, just the page I was on.
Nor was I able to find a feedback email on the site. I'm guessing at feedback@popsci.com and webmaster@popsci.com, and if those bounce, I'll try something less appropriate (subscription services, etc.).
If I were visually challenged, less computer literate, or even less interested in the particular article, you would have lost me on the first screen. The web is about accessibility: I would have thought a magazine about innovation would recognize that.
Best regards,
Subject: Web site feedback I normally don't bother with web site feedback, but I had such a difficult time navigating one of your articles that I felt I had to say something. The article on Augmented Reality, http://www.popsci.com/popsci/computers/article/0,