Slashdot Mirror
Heads-Up Wearable Display
selfsealingstembolt writes "Looks like the guys at NASA are trying to combine some existing technologies into a wearable computer. At the moment it is designed as headset combined with a small box to wear at your belt or so. The interesting part is, that they are looking for new technologies at outside sources (companies, educational institutions, ...). The design is still subject to change, but the general idea is great."
Xybernaut already has wearables for sale. They've already got contracts with branches of the U.S. military, so swinging a deal with the space jockeys shouldn't be too hard.
Come to the University of Mars! Classes starting soon!
The best set of augmented vision stuff is done by Don Papp (http://www.aeinnovations.com). He's pretty well known in the wearable computing circles.
He's the only one I've seen that has put a HUD optical device behind a pair of sunglasses WITHOUT making you look like some sort of mutant. The problem is the display is small, (landscape piece of paper at a range of 4'), and is not quite VGA resolution (400x300 or therabouts, monochrome only).
What folks have to think about is what they really want to display on their glasses. A true design should allow -some- information to the user, but not totally engross them visually. A one line text display can relay an ENORMOUS amount of data - considering the baseline is zero (some data is a vast improvement over no data).
Couple a display with audio cues and a prompting system, you won't exactly be chattering on a high volume IRC channel, but you could get GPS location information, notifications of events (*bing*! - Ah, an event in the network. Let me see what happened...), etc etc.
Augmented reality is -the- application for this stuff. Being able to drive your car, and have your display mark out other cars, or show you where a turn coming up is, or point out hazards at night - or even show you there's a car in your blindspot. Mmm. How about showing you how far your tires are from the curb while you're parking? Ta heck with VR. Enhance whatcha got!
Event Management Solutions : http://www.stonekeep.com/
For those of you with spare cash.
Emagin has a developer kit available to make your own wearable displays.
Personally, I thought this article was presenting nothing new, or spectacular till I realized what was meant by the summary posted on the main page. What is really interesting about the article is that the JPL group is looking to outside resources to develop its applications. As a designer I find this very inspiring. To be selected for a project working with those engineers would be a fantastic opportunity. On top of that the JPL gets to recruit new people in a slightly different field which they would have had no previous experience. Whether or not this device looks good, its still important to maintain a connection with the end-user of the application. Face it, not all engineers have been capable of doing this! Involving the organization with outside organizations such as small business or educational facilities can only be a good thing.