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Wearable PC with an Artificial-Reality Helmet
Roland Piquepaille writes "In this short article, InformationWeek writes that 'two sexy technologies that flamed out five years ago -- wearable computers and artificial reality -- are combined in a new training-development system' for the military. This system, developed by Quantum3D, includes a binocular head-mounted OLED display and head-leg-weapon motion-tracking systems, integrated with a vest-worn tactical visual computer. It runs under Windows XP and is compatible with the 802.11 a/b/g wireless networking standards. It will be used by the infantry to train soldiers, but it looks so complex that I would need intensive training just for using it. Read more for other details and an illustration of the full scary system."
Welcome to the Borg !
Ok, I'm not as religous a microsoft hater as many here, but is there ANY good reason to have this run on XP?
-1, Roland
From the article:
It runs under Windows XP and is compatible with the 802.11 a/b/g wireless networking standards.
Let the flaming begin.
using 802.11 technology is sexy. but, it could be a mess w/o proper control.
^(oo)^pig~
After having worked with ubiquitous computing for a while, I can tell you one thing -- that thing is too big and has very bad affordances for it to take off big time.
On the other hand, look at something that folks like Thad Starner or Steve Mann come up with - better affordances.
(Mann actually had a different helmet design and changed to the Eye-tap design)
Blue screen of literal death.
This sounds like a crutch for good, realistic training. From the short article, which leaves a lot of questions in my head:
Quantum3D Inc., which bills itself as a visual-computing vendor, has announced the availability of the Expedition, a combination wearable computer and artificial-reality gear. The Expedition's target market is developers of so-called immersive training. Their products, in turn, are used to train armed services personnel and emergency-response workers.
Hmm.. it sounds bulky and cumbersome. Are soldiers really running around with a wearable VR gear - no, they aren't (at least not the line troops).
Now, I have limited military experience (some basic training and basic courses), but I happen to know that these troops are going to have a crapload of equipment and this will just add an extremely unrealistic element to their training exercise.
Besides, it will be unreliable and probably add a lot of time to various training exercises. I'm not saying it'll be unreliable just because of Windows XP (although it won't help matters.. BSOD in the middle of an exercise?), but because soldiers tend to crash around heavily with their equipment - and equipment, however sensitive, tends to be broken by technically inept people.
Looks cool, but I'm sure it will take a few million tax dollars to do an evaluation of this machine by Quantum3D and discover the flaws.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
So what would the virtual reality equivalent of the blue screen of death be?
(Soldier not included)
My favorite part, under the image:
"Soldier Not Included"
fsh
Aren't our soldiers already getting too much "virtual" training before we send them to places like Iraq, so huge percentages are coming back with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder?
--
make install -not war
"It will be used by the infantry to train soldiers, but it looks so complex that I would need intensive training just for using it."
By training our soldiers to train to use better training equipment our training will surely improve!
Counter-Strike? Oh yeah.
Wasn't there recently a Slashdot story about people confusing reality with games? Nearly every comment suggested that gamers had that experience at least once... even with Tetris! I think this technology will can that to a whole new level.
Maybe we ought to have a game where you hunt for Osama Bin Laden and then let loose an army of 17 year olds into Tora Bora.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
This is great! Until someone goes wardriving and takes over your helmet. Then you've _really_ been assimilated.
They are training the soldiers to pat their head, rub their tummies and wiggle their toes simultaneously to reboot.
Great, now instead of shooting at our troops, our enemies can simply attack them with viruses and spyware!
Thermite is the name of a highly exothermic compound involving a mixture of aluminum and another metal's oxide (usually iron oxide, a.k.a. rust). It's also the name of the reaction that occurs when you ignite such a mixture.
For those who were curious.
With spending like this, exactly what are "conservatives" conserving?
Christ, I'm getting sick of roland bloody piqualle and his ghey bloody blog.
Can you filter by submitter?
God help us
i just wanna know if i can play counter-strike with it
Looking at the description and the name of the manufacturer, it is interesting to recall that in the history of early CD-ROM videogames, "Quantum Gate" was a "season" of so-called "interactive movies" (VirtualCinema by HyperBole Studios) featuring the idea of VR overlay being (ab)used to turn the actual "soft" targets into something ugly the soldiers would no longer hesitate to shoot.
Whoooo haaaaaa...
Whoooo haaaaaa...
Whoo haaa whoo haaa whoo haaa whoo haaa
whoo ha whoo ha whoo ha whoo ha
I can't breathe in this helmet!
I always imagined the ol' three-fingered salute as just flipping the bird, really.
Middle finger on delete, thumb on alt, and index knuckle on ctrl.
Of course, now you get fragged by your teammate, flip him the bird, and oh, shit, now you have to wait for WinXP to reboot...
fsh
"Hello I'm Clippy. You'll go where I go, eat who I eat and bother who I bother" =)
I think the patent office may have something to say about this; Steve Jobs has had an Artificial-Reality Helmet for some years now.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur
I'm glad that hasn't happened ye--oh wait...
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Wrong thermite:
Drill Instructor: "All right, you maggots, I now that you have the Thermite (tm) strapped to your backs, I want you to fire it up!"
fsh
Why don't WE have VR helmets yet? It's been almost 15 years since the primitive arcade ones appeared and yet here we are in 2005 and still nothing.
This sucks!
this isn't for a soccer mom or surfing the net in the food court while the wife is shopping. Its for soldiers, people who are used to carrying around 100 pounds of equipment. I don't think this is going to be that much of a bother for them.
"Thanks to the remote control I have the attention span of a gerbil."
If you read the small print on the bottom of Q3D's picture of the Explorer you will see "Soldier not included". You need someone else to operate it after you pay an arm and a leg for it.
Imagine playing at a laser tag arena with this set up. You don't need the laser tag arena to has props any more. Just use this to superimpose Doom 3 characters over your friends and populate the arena with "ghost bots" (bots in the game without a real physical counterpart in the laser tag arena). Now THAT would be an awesome experience. I've played laser tag once and it was a lot of fun, but it really needed more atmosphere than the arena actually presented (ie. Needed to be more the like the excellent games Doom or Quake). With that said, I still think Quake I was the best FPS ever created. It had great atmospherics so you didn't even have to play the game if you didn't want to. My friends and I just used it as a way to IM each other with a much cooler interface.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Will take the place of Friendly Fire as cause of Death of soldiers.
When will people learn?
comment directly in my journal
Windows XP, AND 802.11* networking? How long until the first soldiers are scarred for life by goatse beamed directly into their helmet?
The Helmet is a VERY good thing, IMHO.
After all, something needs to protect your head when you keep walking into things because you're staring at a COMPUTER SCREEN instead of the sidewalk.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Beowulf cluster... Nevermind.
As an ammo tech, I'd say calling it the Quantum3D "Thermite" is damm stupid.
Thermite is a rather nasty explosive in my mind, and we do not need that kind of confusion. (Though to be honest it's not exactly a common one nowadays.)
Right.
I mean, I get BSODs all the time.
WAIT
NO
I WAS THINKING OF WINDOWS 95/98, NOT 2000 OR XP
Worlds most expensive form of birth control.
The fact that he has 'accessories' kit or the fact that the caption says "Soldier not included".
Back in the early 1990s I started a company designing consumer VR ware for video games. We did lots of design work, got a few patents (hardware) on our work, then got a big contract from Sega to design key portions of their Virtua VR system - which was an HMD (head-mounted display, the real name for these things) that would plug into the Sega Genesis system to give you full immersion into the game playing world. We worked out all of the technical details, got the prices on the parts down to where it could sell for about $199 retail, and sat back and waited, and waited, and waited. Then Sega killed the project. We never heard from Sega why they killed the project. But, a year later, I heard a lecture from some researchers at SRI, who had done the testing for this helmet on Sega's behalf. Sega wouldn't allow them to release the results, so they did the tests again - on their own dime - and released them. And here's why you won't be wearing an HMD anytime soon:
1) Binocular dysphoria: when you wear a stereo HMD, your eyes/brain are getting one clue for depth perception (parallax) whereas in reality, there are six different cues for depth perception (focus plane, shadowing, etc) which your eye/brain uses to sort out what's going on in the z-plane of reality. While you're in the HMD, the brain adapts to this. Trouble is, when you take the HMD off, your brain is _still_ adapted to this. Now your brain eventually goes back to normal, but this takes some time, and it varies from individual to individual along a bell-curve distribution. Some people come back almost immediately. Others come back very slowly. That is an enormous problem if you go out and get into a car right away, or - as would be the case with the kids using the Virtua VR - getting onto a bike, walking down stairs, etc.
2) Torque: The Virtua VR was, like most early VR HMDs, closer to Darth Vader's helmet than to a pair of eyeglasses. That puts pressure onto the neck, and the neck can't really handle more weight than the head's already putting on it. Adding weight adds a lot of torque to the neck's movements, resulting in much more frequent neck strain.
3) Barfogenics: Although computers are more than fast enough to update images at 30 fps (even the Genesis could do this), the sensors which are used to calculate the yaw/pitch/roll of the head - in order to keep the image aligned with your proprioceptive sense of where your head is - generally don't work nearly as quickly. Most cheaper tracking systems, the kinds you'd find in consumer electronics, have some hysteresis associated with them. And that's bad, because if the image lags the movement by more than 50 msec, almost everyone will end up getting motion sickness. (Technically, this is known as "simulator sickness".) But the sensitivity of people to simulator sickness is also distributed on a bell-curve. Some folks get it very quickly, others don't get it at all.
So there you have it: Sega was told that they'd be selling a device that would cause kids to ruin their depth perception, would give them neck sprains, and would make them puke. Sega didn't even want to think about those kinds of lawsuits...
Today HMDs are lighter, but these fundamental issues remain, and remain unresolved. Yes, you can use optical tracking these days, because comupters are much faster with optical processing, but it's difficult to set up. HMDs are lighter, but they're still bad for your eye/brain. And until those problems get resolved, don't expect to be putting your head into an HMD.
It's interesting to that a number of manufacturers are putting out glowing press releases about their involvement with this, including Transmeta. There's a bit more information on Transmeta's site about the actual specs of the wearable system itself.
And, yes, it can run Linux.
Hello. I notice you're attempting to assymilate or eliminate deverse species into your race. It seems like youj're writing a letter...
whenever you encounter a company with the word "quantum" in its name, and you ask yourself why, you should always keep in mind one thing
Nobody would surrender to the dread pirate Westley
-- Avishalom is usually vish
Sure, Windows crashes are extremely rare since 2k, but we all know that Linux never, ever crashes.
"The onboard NVIDIA GeForceFX Go 5200 Mobile GPU with 64 MB of frame buffer memory delivers industry-leading image quality and graphics performance." Right. I'm sure someone is bilking the military way, way waaaaaay too much for this industry leading, 2 year old video card.
and I dont mean becouse the user is dead eather. one bullet or fragment of metal and all that fancy gear is useless do to system damage.
.gov rememberes the KISS princaple and doesnt adopt this steaming pile of military gear. in the non military role thu it would be cool but very gimmicky.
I really hope the
Wake me when they've got a wearable PC with artificial-reality underwear.
Uh, I think that's the training instructor for the other side of the Iraq war talking.
"Soldier Not Included" well, daa!
Pulsed Media Seedboxes
This reminds me of the Marines in Halo. They all have something like that. They turned out pretty funny, maybe it'll make our army in to a troop of clowns.
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." - C.S. Lewis
You can produce the next version of America's Army, productise the headset and sell it to 'trainees' who you don't even have to pay to train.
Then implement the draft! It's genius!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
again, I konw I love to bitch about this, but what are they doing for the battery Life? Of all the things that need to advance in Technology, wut the hell happened to advancing batteries and all that shit?
Ask not what you can do for your country, ask whats for lunch.
In the illustration the vest is available up to XXL. Excellent! I always have trouble finding wearable comuters in my size;)
+1 Informative !!!!!!
I've seen this Virtua VR before, and I always wonder why it disappeared, because it was such an inovative product for gaming. These explanations are very good.
The Australian "tech" show from the mid-nineties? I swear to God, if I'd heard them harping on about "Virgil Reelidee" one more fucking time I'd have...stopped watching...or something. Those presenters miming away to their simulated Virgil Reelidee games, with the headsets and the wireframe "game eenvironmeents"...could it have sucked any worse?
Remember people, as the illustration says, Soldier not included. Yeah, I know that sucks. I want to buy one with the soldier too. Maybe the next version.
Do not eat artifical reality helmet
I think Jim Nash has been caught up in the AI hype. Quantum3D is well known for its AUGMENTED REALITY equipment rather than artificial reality helmets.
Building HMDs is not rocket science. Back in the early 90s (when I did this kind of research) we used LCD displays purloined from the new portable TVs that were coming on to the market. Sega used 2 320x240 displays (left and right). The focusing system for the eyes (so you don't need to wear glasses, which you can't with most HMDs) is very similar to what you might find in a pair of binoculars. Add an orientation sensor (yaw pitch roll) and that's really just about it. Oh, and you may want a pair of headphones.
;-)
Seriously, this isn't rocket science. We manufactured test HMDs in my garage for a year and a half, using off-the-shelf components. That said, my focal plane can now do things that are downright unnatural - because we used some very odd lensing stages which, well, didn't always work perfectly.
But again, these things really aren't safe for any sort of extended use. 20 minutes, a few times a week, is all that anyone could really hope to tolerate without producing unpleasant side-effects.
All things considered, I think that heads-up displays are far better, because they only add to the real world, rather than substituting something for it. That's where I'd like to see this sort of development go.
Where else can you shoot popups with M16?
Why the hell would you want to go and replace the human eye. Judging from the illustration it looks like super-soldier-man is going to rely on his OLED screen more than his God-given optical organs.
Think about it, eyes have almost infinite resolution and our depth perception and perspective will be a hell of a lot better with our eyes than with some
computer.
Besides since the camera is mounted on his forehead, his lifetime of spacial judgement training is thrown in the garbage and the soldier will be forever bonking his head on low-lying ceilings.
Sounds scary to me.
If all else fails... RTFM
A Man-Wearable PC with an Artificial-Reality Helmet
. jpg
In this short article, InformationWeek writes that "two sexy technologies that flamed out five years ago -- wearable computers and artificial reality -- are combined in a new training-development system" for the military. This system, developed by Quantum3D, includes a binocular head-mounted OLED display and head-leg-weapon motion-tracking systems, integrated with a vest-worn tactical visual computer. It runs under Windows XP and is compatible with the 802.11 a/b/g wireless networking standards. It will be used by the infantry to train soldiers, but it looks so complex that I would need intensive training just for using it. Read more...
Here is how InformationWeek describes the system.
Quantum3D Inc., which bills itself as a visual-computing vendor, has announced the availability of the Expedition, a combination wearable computer and artificial-reality gear. The Expedition's target market is developers of so-called immersive training. Their products, in turn, are used to train armed services personnel and emergency-response workers.
Among the components are a binocular head-mounted display and head-leg-weapon motion-tracking system by eMagin, and Quantum3D's Thermite tactical visual computer that's worn on a vest. Together, the components are designed to give the wearer accurate simulations of fabricated situations, including visuals, surround sound, and voice command.
http://www.primidi.com/images/wearable_expedition
The above illustration shows all the components of the Expedition. (Credit: Quantum3D Inc.) It comes from this datasheet (PDF format, 2 pages, 901 KB), which includes a description of the realtime visual system -- but please keep in mind that it comes from the company which wants to sell the Expedition.
The Quantum3D THERMITE Tactical Visual Computer features a man-wearable, light weight, small form factor, superrugged, sealed alloy enclosure with Mil-Spec connectors and conduction cooling that brings the performance and application compatibility of mobile PC workstations to deployed operations in hostile environments. The onboard NVIDIA GeForceFX Go 5200 Mobile GPU with 64 MB of frame buffer memory delivers industry-leading image quality and graphics performance.
The eMagin binocular OLED head mounted display (HMD) technology is used in Expedition's primary viewing device and provides a 40 degree diagonal field of view and 1.44 megapixels per 24-bit color SVGA microdisplay. With a 200:1 contrast ratio, patented OLED-on-silicon technology to enhance refresh rates, and on-chip signal processing and data buffering, the HMD provides bright, crisp, and flicker-free stereovision capability.
Quantum3D offers slightly more information in this press release, but doesn't provide a price for the Expedition system.
Sources: Jim Nash, InformationWeek, February 16, 2005; Quantum3D website
Related stories can be found in the following categories.
Its capitalized THERMITE for the system, and just Thermite for the batteries... ?
I thought "WOW! COOL! They figured out a way to control the burn really slowly and are using it to power the system!!!" Guess not.
FYI, its fun stuff to (carefully) play around with. You just need to grind/sand/file some stuff. Mix 3 parts powdered rust with 1 part powdered aluminum - light with a magnesium strip or sparkler.
lol
Blue Screen of Death
It's an oldie but a goodie.
Flamed out?
I'm sorry, but there is a piece of wearable computing equipment in my pocket at all times. I mostly use it for music, as an adress book, and occasionally for a good game of brickout... it's the kind of things a computer can do that are convenient on the go.
In fact, most people I know have a sofisticated piece of telecommunication computing technology on them most of the time, some of those can even take pictures! We ask them to turn them off in theatres and in class, but you see people outdoors using them quite often.
You can't take the sky from me...
heh, you meant goggle.
Nice system, but using Nvidia FX5200 Mobile for its real-time 3d graphics support is a little weird in this day.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
Consider that warfare consisted of sticks and stones for many thousands of years. WinXP is just a step up. Well, sideways atleast.
i thought the most interesting thing is that 800x600 oled hmd displays are coming (finally) vs. the currently on market 640x480. of course, how long it takes for the emagin unit to make it into consumer-available (and affordable) technology remains to be seen.
Hey... I just realized that I HAD seen that graphic before... isn't that the groklaw backdrop from the top??? Did this guy just lift that graphic from groklaw? http://www.groklaw.net/
- Brett
This is ridiculous... why aren't the editors kicking this guy out??? but then again, at least he's honest sorta about himself... other sneaky types probably are pushing their own ad revenue by making their submissions with a pseudonym slashdot account
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
My tinfoil hat runs cp/m and kicks its ass.
Does anyone else remember a few years back when Quantum 3D was making voodoo banshee cards?
where have you been? Military's been running Windows for a long long time now. Way back when, it made the headlines when a Navy destroyer (or was that a cruiser) got stuck out in the ocean because the NT computer running the ship crashed.
Someone mentioned to me once that the U.S. spends more on our military than almost all others countries put together.
Anyone know if this is true, or where to get the figures?
Anyone know how much the Windows XP G.I.Joe is going for?
Don't you mean.. BIZZARO!
For more Information, look here (original press release from Quantum3D):d _Anno.htm t e.html
http://www.quantum3d.com/press/2005/02-15-05_Expe
and here (Quantum3D about Thermite):
http://www.quantum3d.com/products/Thermite/thermi
The former Soviet bloc had more troops than us, China has WAY more troops than us, both match us in tanks bombs and artillery, so we needed to develop better stuff than them. To a large degree this has paid off, although the amount of money spent has been tremendous. But things like GPS guided bombs, stealth aircraft and high tech command-and-control systems do give our troops an advantage.
Even though the military does do stupid things on occasion, give them some credit. If a system is truly unwieldy and flops miserably during testing, it won't get adopted for field use. The fact that they're constantly looking at new high tech stuff, trying to find something useful, means that they will have lot of flops too. But one thing you can say about U.S. military for sure - they're not stagnant.
I just love the fine-print in the bottom of this picture!
God help us
I think you misspelled "Bill Gates"
One cute result you get (apart from the light, and the heat, and the screaming if you try it at home) is molten iron. I've seen video of railway engineers using the thermite reaction in a shaped 'bucket' to weld railway tracks together.
Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
What is the difference in approach with your kit and say Steve Manns? Admittantly your system is commercial consumer grade where constraints of market and production play a big part in releasing product. But Manns research and production into wearable computers (wearcomp: tapping into his right eye) has been around for ages.
peterrenshaw ~ Another Scrappy Startup
"really hope the .gov rememberes the KISS princaple "
Are we talking about the heavy metal group KISS? I mean, I wouldn't want the government to adopt a heavy metal band to be apart of the Army. Too much history, y'know?
an Amiga?
http://rolandblocker.50megs.com
important: right-click and SAVE AS, do not try to install directly, it doesn't seem to work
this was a 3-hour hack over "Hello World" xpi by Eric Hamiter and over blockxxx by Tom Christensen
http://rolandblocker.50megs.com
this was a 3-hour hack over "Hello World" xpi by Eric Hamiter [roachfiend.com] and over blockxxx by Tom Christensen [technerve.com]
you modded up the A.C. "-1 Roland", so mod the extension announcement too!
Roland is timothy's boyfriend, they like to fuck each other's butt with vaseline (which they buy in liters from the blog ad revenue)
This is from SPACE BALLS. He's not off topic, only trying to be funny
Built-in wireless networking? I guess that gives a whole new meaning to wardriving, then.
quidquid latine dictum sit altum videtur.
I think the real nice thing is that this is a recent instance of an HMD using OLEDs instead of LCD or CRT devices. That is the real story on it...
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
More about the OLED/Pled Display technology at http://www.oled-display.net/
While this could go into the field, the real power of this system is in mission rehearsal. Think about it. You have to storm into a city you've never been to. Get you troups together out at base in the desert, fire up the 3D version of the city, run your mission - PRACTICE it before you go and do it. I can see this saving a lot of lives.
The enemy is completely familiar with their surroundings - this is the next best way to give our troups the same advantage.
The other advantage would be, after they run their mission, they can play it back and see where they made mistakes.