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Bionic Eyeglasses May Boost Impaired Vision
fangmcgee writes with this excerpt from a University of Oxford news release:
"Technology developed for mobile phones and computer gaming – such as video cameras, position detectors, face recognition and tracking software, and depth sensors – is now readily and cheaply available. So Oxford researchers have been looking at ways that this technology can be combined into a normal-looking pair of glasses to help those who might have just a small area of vision left, have cloudy or blurry vision, or can’t process detailed images. ... The glasses have video cameras mounted at the corners to capture what the wearer is looking at, while a display of tiny lights embedded in the see-through lenses of the glasses feed back extra information about objects, people or obstacles in view. In between, a smartphone-type computer running in your pocket recognizes objects in the video image or tracks where a person is, driving the lights in the display in real time. The extra information the glasses display about their surroundings should allow people to navigate round a room, pick out the most relevant things and locate objects placed nearby."
No Steve Austin bionic eye sound, no dice. :(
For the upskirt community, a wireless connection between the shoes and the screen in the glasses will be a godsend
. .
...which are: 1) how do you get the signal from the cameras in the glasses to the processor and back to the display, and 2) how do you power them? It seems like you're going to need a fairly high bandwidth to carry visual information from the cameras and back up. Since these are glasses, you'll need to do this over a meter or more, and have to use an extremely flexible data pipe. Maybe some sort of flexure- or motion-powered charger could be used to top off the batteries. This (power) is the single greatest hurdle to overcome in the design of prosthetics.
Chaos maximizes locally around me.
3) The tech is only good for 20 years. Right around the same time your power problem is solved, Apple's patent expires and the glasses will turn against their wearer and power down whenever near a movie theater, a TV screen, camera-shy celebrities, or anyone in government (especially cops).
Things might've ended differently for Colin Blythe.
#DeleteChrome
Is that an augmented reality bionic vision smart phone like device in your pocket, and/or are you happy to see me?
I'm very curious as to how they've managed to display information on conventional-looking glasses that the wearer is actually capable of focusing on. Every time a story like this has come up of some group that developed normal-appearing glasses with a display, it's turned out to be vapor or a useless concept mockup. Existing head-mounted displays all involve bulky prisms/mirrors that push the effective focal length of the image far enough out that the viewer can actually see it. If you simply make a transparent display on the lens itself or attempt to project onto it, a human normally can't focus anywhere near close enough for it to be visible, and this has been the most serious problem with any sort of device like this.
Meh, it would be a better biotech to simply regenerate or clone the eyes. Creating cyborgs shouldn't be the goal.
I refuse to buy one unless it looks like I'm wearing a hair accessory on my face.
blind people have fashion standards to follow, you know.
Many years ago, they have developed a system where completely blind people can see outlines. A camera is interfaced with the brain to send it signals. From what I heard there was even a sub driver in new york city who had such an implant. The camera was hidden in a sunglasses lookalike device. Extending and working on that research would be much much more useful than branching to, well lets use AI to flash colored LEDs. YAY! Sounds like a common thesis for these days, not something actually useful. Mind you it will be much cheaper than the other device I mentioned, but it will be just as much less useful.
Can't we have a rudimentary and decent version of glasses with such capabilities for ar already please?
The mods are killing you but it is amazing how right you really are.
A loop, by its nature, continues. If that didn't make sense, start reading this sentence again.
No shit, Sherlock! Eyeglasses boost impaired vision. Always have done. That's what they're for.
There are no new materials (not really possible anyways, unless the Table of Elements is continued on the reverse?),
Fullerene is a new materials from the last couple of decades that looks very promising.
Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
for the Ixians, thanks.
When I was a kid we had (in no particular order):
I'm sure I'm forgetting a thousand more things, but technologically the world is extraordinarily different from when I was young. People are pretty much the same, except they seem to be simultaneously both less and more ignorant.
Helping near-blind people see is all well and good, but, when will this technology be available to the average consumer? I want my heads-up display. Think about it, glasses that can overlay contact information on people you meet via facial recognition, price comparisons simple by looking at a barcode, IMs or emails scrolling across your vision. I want. I want now.
Honestly, this has been in development for decades. Prof Steve Mann and Prof Thad Starner are the ones that started this.
Problem is everyone has been claiming that the VR glasses are "not that far off" for 20 years now. and they are no closer now than they were in 1998. we don't have light emitting optically transparent emitters that can emulate a focal distance so the eye does not have to focus on them. the closest was a set of glasses that THad Starner made with a small Prism in them that would reflect a tiny image into the field of view but it caused optical aberration around the location and major blind spot when not displaying anything.
This stuff is still 100 years away, they dont even have lab prototypes to even research that comes close to what is needed.
Near blind being blasted by LED's because they cant see anyways is easy. something that even someone that needs corrective lenses will not be driven nuts by the optical distortion is 100% impossible for a very long time.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
So I repeat: WHERE is the future? Where is the technology? The other day we got a new FPGA development kit, all shiny and new, and to symbolize speed and technology, what's on the box? An F-15. Designed in the 1960s, flown for 40 years. It still symbolizes technology because it's at the peak of what can be done in the physical world. Unfortunately, smaller transistors and faster processors do nothing in the physical world. That F-15 still flies at Mach 2.5 whether its flight computer uses discrete transistors or a Core i9 or whatever.
Geeks don't get that.
If we have all this technology, why do we still live in perpetual fear of losing our jobs, or having no money? Clearly, it's all an illusion. Where is the leisure society? We have technology, so where is it? Everyone is *so* productive now with their iPads! So what are they producing? For who? Where is it? How come people still starve?
Because we've changed nothing. Shinier toys, that's it. And BTW, the 747 from your era flew as fast and as high as our 747s. Nothing's changed.
This far into the postings, and yet, no one has said it.
I'll believe it when I see it.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Anyone, wearing any eyeglasses at all, is by definition a cyborg.
And have they built anything more significant than a toothpick with that in the last few decades? That's my point.
OK, I was going to type several more paragraphs, but you're not worth the trouble. Just think for yourself.