Wearable Computer With Lightweight HUD

zeazzz writes to mention that the folks over at UMPC have a very cool little writeup and pictorial of a user's latest wearable PC. With the surge in smart phone adoption it seems that enthusiasm for wearable computers has dropped off a bit, which is too bad. I certainly look forward to my augmented reality HUD instead of depending on my iPhone for everything. "Essentially he took the MyVu headset, removed one of the eye pieces, and mounted the other to his glasses to that he could see his surroundings and the UX's screen at the same time. The MyVu is attached to the UX through the A/V output port on the UX's port replicator dongle. With some additional addons he provided his UX with extra battery life via an external battery, and several input methods to communicate with the UX while the rest of the kit resides within the backpack."

Comments

Resolution

[chill]

640x480

While this may be fine for watching video without getting neck strain from being hunched over, it makes computing life a pain.

Until one of these things can give me a full 1024x768 or better display, it'll always be a niche toy for computing.

Re:Resolution

[chill]

No, reality.

I've spent a lot of time as an admin for some fairly large companies. One thing I noticed is that a lot of people who aren't into CAD, programming or graphics design, don't like resolutions above 1024x768. I've lost count of the times I've set shiny new LCD monitors to their spec res like 1280x1024 only to have people change the res back down. The fonts are too small. If you change the font sizes, programs start to look weird, so they change the res.

Hell, look at the number of web page templates that are hard set for 1024x768. Lots of white space on the margins.

If you're a web admin, set up a test and check your logs. Record the screen and window res of people hitting your pages and you'll be shocked to see the bulk are usually 1024x768.

It is sad, but it is the way it is.

Re:Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

[Anonymous Coward]

That won't work...try to focus on your contact lens...or more likely, some bit of dirt or smudge on it. You can't; there needs to be a bit of distance between the lens and the thing you're trying to optically perceive.

Been done

[skrimp]

Xybernaut did this back in the 90s with a monocle hud, voice recognition, and a wearable cpu. It was underpowered, but saw some demand in the manufacturing and maintenance fields. I always thought it was a good idea and hoped it would go mainstream. Sony even threatened to make a 'ComputeMan' with the tech. I would have to agree that there's not enough demand and or it's too geeky.

Re:It's a decent hack, but the HUD is problematic

[MartinSchou]

Of course it's feasible.

Samsung presented a transparent OLED display at CES 2009, another example from 2008. Sony presented a flexible OLED display in 2007, making a display following the glasses curvature easily doable.

And I picked the nVidia Tegra as the computer, as that's already been proven to be plenty capable of doing AR and HD playback.

You don't even need to mount batteries in the glasses. You can run power and data cables inside a tether for the glasses, similar to the thingie for the iPod with cables for the head phones. All you need then is input and bluetooth works well enough for mice. You could use a virtual keyboard, but I suspect that's suck horribly.

Re:It's a decent hack, but the HUD is problematic

[Anonymous Coward]

The display isn't the problem. It's the optics. You can't just put a display right next to your eye without a collimator to place it at a distant focus, or it will just be a blur and will create major eye strain.