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Cyber-Goggles Record and Identify Every Object You See 108

Posted by Zonk from the partially-sapient-ai-additional-charge dept.
RemyBR writes "Researchers at the University of Tokyo have developed a smart video goggle system that records everything the wearer looks at, recognizes and assigns names to objects that appear in the video. Advanced programs then go back and create an easily searchable database of the recorded footage. Designed to function as a high-tech memory aid, these 'Cyber Goggles' promise to make the act of losing your keys a thing of the past, according to head researcher professor Tatsuya Harada. 'In a demonstration at the University of Tokyo last week, 60 everyday items -- including a potted begonia, CD, hammer and cellphone -- were programmed into the Cyber Goggle memory. As the demonstrator walked around the room viewing and recording the various objects, the names of the items appeared on the goggle screen. The demonstrator was then able to do a search for the various items and retrieve the corresponding video.'" Add in facial recognition technology and this would make for a great aid at conferences and family reunions.
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Cyber-Goggles Record and Identify Every Object You See More

Cyber-Goggles Record and Identify Every Object You See

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  • as ass boobs (Score:5, Funny)

    by edittard ( 805475 ) on Monday March 03, 2008 @05:52PM (#22629134)
    Ass ass boobs ass ass car ass ass boobs OKG PANTIEZZ!!!!! ass ass boobs.

  • Vapourware! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Saint Aardvark ( 159009 ) * on Monday March 03, 2008 @05:53PM (#22629136) Homepage Journal
    Ze goggles, zey do nossing.
  • I, for one, welcome our new uhh...pardon me... *click*, *click* ah, yes..our new goggle-eyed...ummm...just a sec...*click*..overcome, no...*click*...overdon, no ..., *click*, *click* yes, overlords!
    Hey, where did everybody go?

  • Add in facial recognition technology and this would make for a great aid at conferences and family reunions.

    How would it recognise everyone's faces when they're all wearing the goggles?

  • Snow Crash (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Aeonite ( 263338 ) on Monday March 03, 2008 @05:56PM (#22629182) Homepage
    Someone in this overpass, somewhere, is bouncing a laser beam off Hiro's face. It's annoying. Without being too obvious about it, he changes his course slightly, wanders over to a point downwind of a trash fire that's burning in a steel drum. Now he's standing in the middle of a plume of diluted smoke that he can smell but can't quite see.

    But the next time the laser darts into his face, it scatters off a million tiny, ashy particulates and reveals itself as a pure geometric line in space, pointing straight back to its source.

    It's a gargoyle, standing in the dimness next to a shanty. Just in case he's not already conspicuous enough, he's wearing a suit. Hiro starts walking toward him. Gargoyles represent the embarrassing side of the Central Intelligence Corporation. Instead of using laptops, they wear their computers on their bodies, broken up into separate modules that hang on the waist, on the back, on the headset. They serve as human surveillance devices, recording everything that happens around them. Nothing looks stupider, these getups are the modern-day equivalent of the slide-rule scabbard or the calculator pouch on the belt, marking the user as belonging to a class that is at once above and far below human society. They are a boon to Hiro because they embody the worst stereotype of the CIC stringer. They draw all of the attention. The payoff for this self-imposed ostracism is that you can be in the Metaverse all the time, and gather intelligence all the time.

    The CIC brass can't stand these guys because they upload staggering quantities of useless information to the database, on the off chance that some of it will eventually be useful. It's like writing down the license number of every car you see on your way to work each morning, just in case one of them will be involved in a hit-and-run accident. Even the CIC database can only hold so much garbage. So, usually, these habitual gargoyles get kicked out of CIC before too long.

    This guy hasn't been kicked out yet. And to judge from the quality of his equipment -- which is very expensive -- he's been at it for a while. So he must be pretty good.

    • Transmetropolitan (Score:4, Interesting)

      by meringuoid ( 568297 ) on Monday March 03, 2008 @06:44PM (#22629688)
      So apparently I fucked my editor's niece.

      Her name's Yelena Rossini. Anglo-Russian-Italian. Old Heath Road. Her family are so old money they're prehistoric-riche.

      I fucked my editor's niece and she says nothing happened. But I know it did. Because I'm clever.

      And because I left my shades on. And my shades' defence system thought all the falling down and rolling around and stuff was an assault.

      And what does it do when there's an assault? I'm glad you asked.

      It takes PICTURES.

      -- Spider Jerusalem, Transmetropolitan, 'Year of the Bastard'

    • Re:Snow Crash (Score:5, Informative)

      by RDW ( 41497 ) on Monday March 03, 2008 @07:34PM (#22630216)
      'Those VL glasses. Virtual light...Friend of mine, he'd bring a pair home from the office where he worked. Landscape architects. Put 'em on, you go out walking, everything looks normal, but every plant you see, every tree, there's this little label hanging there, what its name is, Latin under that. . .'

      - William Gibson, _Virtual Light_
    • Crust: "Watching, all the time watching...goggle-eyed geeks. Soon as I get out, I'm going to Patagonia, buy it?

      ...And not so many barrel spoilers... rotten old apples that sit an' stink ... and stare atcha!"

      "Freon!" Crat cursed. "Just once I'd like to catch some goggle geek alone, with fritzed sensors and no come-go record, then I'd teach 'em it's not polite to stare!"

      ... "Oh it started as a way to fight street crime - retired people staking out the streets with video cameras and crude beepers. And the

    • also the ATHF episode with shakes stupid gigantic body suit/phone
    • I was thinking of this book the moment I read the subject line. Awesome.
  • It's actually possible to do 3d object recognition in real time eh? 60 objects you say.. hmm, might need support for about 100 times that before use in an autonomous household robot. Some general recognition of categories might be needed too.. otherwise just my cutlery draw will max out 60 objects.

    • sounds iffy indeed (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Quadraginta ( 902985 ) on Monday March 03, 2008 @07:01PM (#22629876)
      I've dabbled in object segmentation and recognition, and it's a bitch unless you cheat, e.g. by restricting yourself to pre-assigned objects, making sure your objects are always in high-contrast good-lighting conditions, or accepting lots of false negatives or positives. So I'm kind of doubting it will replace the ol' eye-brain recognition system.

      That said, I can see some useful related applications. Imagine a helicopter pilot doing search and rescue work. He sees something worth checking out -- say a tiny smoke plume -- and says "bingo." That's picked up by a computer, which is also monitoring his goggles, so it knows in what direction he's looking, and has done some very basic image analysis so it knows to ignore the canopy struts, Sun, shadows et cetera in the field of view. It then combines this with a GPS locator beacon and a good topo map, and instantly computes and records the exact location (latitude and longitude) of the sight of interest. Could save some lives.

      Or imagine an emergency worker on the ground during a big fire. He sees a worrying flare-up. Wearing the goggles, he can just say "Looks like trouble over there!" and the goggles, plus associated GPS device and computer, can instantly transmit to headquarters precisely where there is, even if the guy observing doesn't know himself.
      • You wouldn't happen to know of any good, accessible resources for somebody just getting into object recognition would you? So far I seem to have a knack for selecting the most obtuse references I can and it's starting to pick my pocket- any help would be much appreciated.
      • Don't forget that eventually there would be LOTS of pre-assigned objects: every user of this system could potentially contribute various iterations of any kind of object to a communal database. Eventually, with enough examples and some clever software, new objects of a given class could very easily be recognized.

        I believe someone's already using humans to sort photos right now - two humans will each view a picture on a web-site and both of them will write a caption the subject of it. Lots and lots of people
      • Good to see some progress finally being made after all these decades. Been waiting for this sort of stuff and _more_ for quite a _while_.

        Given that the tech for reading brain patterns is getting more and more viable ( http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/114843/game-on-with-the-braincontrolled-pc.html ), all you need to do is get a computer to associate thought macros with the pictures (and audio) the computer and you are getting at the same time.

        Why try replacing the brain with computers to do perception etc? Augme

  • Sounds vaguely familiar... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by slimak ( 593319 ) on Monday March 03, 2008 @05:58PM (#22629210)
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0364343/ [imdb.com]
  • Now, just integrate the camera and screen directly into the glasses, and give me a Terminator style head-up display!

    Bonus for running ROM dumps of the Apple II O/S on the edges...
  • Will we all look like [slashdot.org] this when we wear these goggles?

  • Pointless project (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Kazrath ( 822492 ) on Monday March 03, 2008 @06:00PM (#22629236)
    If you walked around in public with those things on you definitley would not have to worry about remembering ppl's names/faces as people would probably walk on the other side of the road to avoid you. Don't worry about remembering that girl's name/number because they were both fake also.

    Personally.. I think paying attention to what your doing and maybe not being constantly on a cell phone/Ipod would be more effective and less time consuming in remembering WTF you are/were doing.

    • Re:Pointless project (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Mantaar ( 1139339 ) on Monday March 03, 2008 @06:15PM (#22629404) Homepage
      Aw common, you're being a crank now. What's the point of this strange things, supposedly able to move all by themselves? They stink, they're slower than horses, and they're ugly, too! You'll never get laid if you ride such a thing, but think about riding a nice beautiful horse! Now that's what the ladies like!

      Seriously though, imagine we could get the size of that thing down. Substantially. Like, totally. There are several possibilities:
      a) implant to the retina. Make the goggles go away, wire it directly to the brain. Like Terminator's interface, only this one makes sense!
      b) get it down to a size where it would at least fit into glasses. What about making blind people 'recognize' what they can't see? All you need is some glasses with this technology and a bud in your ear that would tell you: 'street' or 'car, incoming, rapidly' or 'woman, age: mid-30, attractive, married'. OK, the system would need a great deal of sophistication for the latter...

      This project is all but pointless! You can enhance a human's possibilities, whether they're impaired (visually or otherwise) or not!
      • Cyber-eyes anyone? I don't know whether to be happy to be the first to reference this or sad that no one else made the leap... Terminator would be cool, but the Shadowrun-style cyber-eyes would be way better.
      • Scene: blind guy in a bar ( no not a tavern, this isn't D&D )

        AI Interface: Middle age woman, moderately attractive.
        blind guy: More details on attractive.
        AI Interface: Brown hair, blue eyes, medium build.
        blind guy: Is she a candidate for a romantic encounter?
        AI Interface: Calculated value for romantic encounter: "I'd do her!"
        blind guy: Are you calculating in my current blood alcohol level?
        AI Interface: Yes. Besides your blind, all she has to do is feel pretty.
        blind guy: Damn vicarious slashdot rea
    • So, maybe what they need are very regular-looking glasses with what appears to be a neckstrap but is actually a set of fibre-optic cables leading to a hidden processor and recorder.
  • Cyber-gOOgles...

    I almost thought this was an article about government spying on surfers...

  • They need a Cowboy Bebop version (Score:3, Informative)

    by graveyhead ( 210996 ) <fletch&fletchtronics,net> on Monday March 03, 2008 @06:03PM (#22629278)
    It's Edward's goggles [photobucket.com]! How cool is that, I totally want a pair :)
  • i was going to say these would be handy for picking out ex's from the crowd, but then i realized this is slashdot and the chances of more then one female wanting to mate with any of you is remote.

  • Designed to function as a high-tech memory aid, these 'Cyber Goggles' promise to make the act of losing your keys a thing of the past.
    I just wish the goggle knows the whereabout of itself and whereabout of its owner.
  • It's technology like this that is going to kick Big Brother right in the nads!
  • I think this would be excellent tech to provide to Alzheimer's sufferers, as long as they could remember they had it! If they could program in people's names and play back the last few times they'd seen the person, do a quick review of what they did before they had their nap, review the route they took to where they currently are, etc. that would have a HUGE impact on Alzheimer's sufferers' lives.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Warll ( 1211492 )
      "Where am I? and whats this silly thing hanging over my eyes?"

    • Re:Sounds promising for Alzheimer's sufferers.... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Mr. Roadkill ( 731328 ) on Monday March 03, 2008 @07:33PM (#22630204)

      I think this would be excellent tech to provide to Alzheimer's sufferers, as long as they could remember they had it!
      And that would be the problem for some.

      Imagine yourself with Alzheimers. Imagine you used to be a sane, normal person - perhaps a little paranoid, because you worked in IT or security or some other field in which the knowledge that other people could be dicks was rubbed in your face day after day, or just from reading one newspaper too many.

      Now, imagine that part of your everyday environment is a little voice that whispers details to you about what you've supposedly done, people you've supposedly seen, things you don't remember. Or glowing words that appear in mid-air - "This is your son. His last visit was a week ago, and he brought your grandchildren". Only, you don't remember any of that - and that can't be your son, because he's five years old and that man was close to fifty. And it won't stop. You *do* remember that people who hear voices or see things get carted off to places far less pleasant than the one you're in, even though you don't quite know where *here* is, and keep your mouth shut.

      Perhaps things would be better if the person you used to be had trained themselves to accept direction better. Only, you don't know that's the problem because you've forgotten all that - and you were always more of a goat than a sheep anyway. So, you shut up out of self-preservation, go through the motions and pretend to recognise the strangers who show up bearing names of relatives. Only, that man who claims to be your son actually looks a little like your father. Could it be... your hands, they're old... you suddenly realise for a few seconds who you are and what you've become, and you break down into uncontrollable tears. Then, just as the man you claims to be your son calls for the nurse, it stops and you ask him "Who are you? What are we doing here?", just as you always do. The voice tells you that this is your son (only it can't be, your son is ten), and that you're home. You remember the voice - it's the only constant in your life, and you remember it lies, but you can't make it stop and you're too weak to do anything but go along with it. So, you nod along, pretend to know the people who show up ("Ah, he's a little better this week - no outbursts, and he seems to know everyone") and occasionally remember enough to want to pray for forgetfulness - and forget to be thankful when that prayer is answered.

      • inspiringly good reading, Mr Roadkill
      • Parent post needs to be modded +1, Terrifying.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by thesandtiger ( 819476 )
        Hm, I could also see this leading to a problem of really weak memory skills for people who use it. I mean, I'm used to having to remember little things constantly, and there's good support for the idea that the more you use your memory the better it gets. What would happen if people began relying on this stuff as much as they do on, say, phonebooks in their cell phones?

        When I was younger, I used to remember the phone numbers of dozens of people. Now, on a good day, I might be able to remember mine. Same thi
        • It's been proven that people rely on technology to extend their memory (in fact use technology to do pretty much anything as a natural extension of their body). Instead of remembering everyones' phone numbers, you store them all in a device for the purpose and remember how to retrieve them. A persons' name gets cross-referenced in your mind with the information in the phonebook, and it all still works fine.

          Most people don't even realise. To them it's perfectly natural that their phonebook is their memory of
      • Good god, is there a Slashdot award for the most depressing post ever? I'm half inclined to go and kill everyone I like to spare them the possibility.

        • Good god, is there a Slashdot award for the most depressing post ever? I'm half inclined to go and kill everyone I like to spare them the possibility.

          The problem isn't so much with the tech itself, as with its application. I wrote that post from the assumption that a one-size-fits-all technological solution will be applied in some cases, and that it in some of those it will fail to help its "beneficiaries" in terrifying ways that aren't immediately apparant to their carers.

          Maybe in a couple of decades

  • First the keyboards came for my handwriting, reducing it to a scrawl Then the speed dial came for number memory - I used to be able to memorize #s for friends and family, no more then the GPS came for spacial awareness. I just follow the voice now. Now they're coming for my other memories. Pretty soon I won't be able to recognize a begonia without help from a computer.
  • Was I the only one to immediately think of POV pr0n?

    Object recognition now on... Shawna, kojak, Shawna, kojak, Shawna, kojak, Shawna, kojak, Shawna, kojak, Shawna, kojak, snow storm. All over Shawna.
  • This reminds me of the Heads up displays in many RTS and RPG games, where you look at an object and it tells you what it is. I can see more advanced versions of this technology doing exactly that, having applications in almost every field, along with military use. And if the database was made large enough, the ability to look at literally anything and know instantly what it is, and is used for would be downright awesome.
    • Funny, my first thought was of the scan visor from the Metroid Prime series. All you'd need would be to build in a universal remote control, and you're good to go.

      Now, if they can just figure out how to stuff a 6' tall human into a 2' diameter armored beach-ball...
  • Paging Mr. Gibson, Mr. William Gibson [amazon.com]....
  • ..but can they counteract the effects of beer goggles to keep slashdotters from taking home questionable members of the opposite sex on a Friday night?
    • Maybe not, but they could probably stop you from screaming out the wrong name during an intimate moment with that questionable member of the opposite sex.

  • Add in facial recognition technology and this would make for a great aid at conferences and family reunions.

    Not to mention nightclubs. Well I guess edittard nailed that already...

  • These could come in handy..... Helping me remember who that chick that I keep waking up next to is.
  • Read the title as "cyber-googles" and got all worked up for nothing.

    Move on. Nothing to see here.
  • Did anyone else hesitate to clink on a link about Japanese researchers which has a domain name of "pinktentacle"?
  • Why isn't one of the tags for this article virtuallight?
  • Sounds like a good first step towards Star Trek-style sensors.
  • Check out the picture. Do Japanese scientists always dress like that when they're doing science, or was it just Cosplay Friday?
  • Shouldn't they be tracking your iris so they can see exactly what you are looking at rather then just the direction you are looking in?
  • Once we figure out that whole "gravity" thing, it should make things that much easier when we finally start having real-world katamari-rolling contests. Not only could the goggles tell you what your katamari consists of, they could also tell you how big the thing is relative to any objects contained within it... just like the game versions do now.

    Of course, I expect the first person to do it right will be a mad scientist type with a god complex. (Though, I have to admit, launching a ball of screaming brats
  • I had some cyber-contact lenses so I could remember where the hell I put my cyber-goggles.

  • "... smart video goggle system that records everything the wearer looks at, recognizes and assigns names to objects that appear in the video. Advanced programs then go back and create an easily searchable database of the recorded footage."

    That pretty much describes how my memory works, except I usually remember things with all 5 senses, not just vision. When I need to find something, I close my eyes and call up the sensory data associated with the last time I saw it. Until recently, I thought that was ju

  • I sense the legal dogs of war drooling.
  • ...at first, then realized that Cyber and Google are mutually exclusive terms.
  • This is the kind of far-out technology that WE should be working on, not waiting for other countries to develop it then jump on the me-too bandwagon. Unfortunately we're too busy worrying about patent infringement and letting archaic beliefs get in the way of real scientific and technological progress.

    Kudos to the Japanese for working on these things. I just wish we were frontrunners ourselves.
  • OK, so now the database is getting pretty big and it can now name almost everything you look at. So I walk through an airplane terminal looking for my boss and the goggles label everything they recognize: "Planter, escalator, linoleum, courtesy phone, shoes, window, roof truss, coffee cup, wristwatch, suitcase, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc....

    Oh yeah, this is going to help me tremendously. Now instead of having to try to pick out my boss from all those other passengers, I have to try to pic

  • Is training software to recognize objects, or using them for AI verification, to improve AI for robots. Have a simple validation method, button or voice prompt, tied to the recognition that lets it learn, wear them around for a few months and watch your AI system grow exponentially "smarter." Or at least better trained. Once you have a system that agrees with the average human's perception of their environment, your robot's got it made.
  • Cybernetic systems like these goggles will raise interesting legal issues. The goggles can record audio. But in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan, it is often illegal to record voice conversations without the prior consent [blogspot.com] of all parties.

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