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Comments: 150 +- Hardware: Wearable Computer With Lightweight HUD on Monday July 27 2009, @03:41PM
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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."
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Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Score:2)
I'd like to have one implanted in the eye like in the Doctorow book, kind of like IOLs are implanted for cataract surgery. I wonder how close we are to developing that?
I mean, I wore glasses from 1958 until 2002 when I got contacts, and since I had surgery in 2006 I don't even need contacts. Glasses suck. Contacts are better, but a multifocal IOL beats even them.
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Re:Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom (Score:5, Interesting)
I think contact lenses make a lot more sense. Then you could remove them. They'd be a lot easier to upgrade as well. I don't see any reason they couldn't have their circuitry embedded in them off near the edge, and have power beamed in.
Contact lenses might make a lot of sense as targets for a vision system like the one described in Snow Crash. Perhaps if you integrated some MEMS components into them they could contain a scanning mirror set, even, and perform a sort of DLP-esque function.
If I'm getting an eye implant, I want a lot more than a HUD. I expect telescopic vision via electrowetting lenses.
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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.
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Glasses rule!
They protect eyes and with photochromic lenses you won't need separate sunglasses.
Also, you can get some time to think by taking off glasses and slowly wiping them, when you're asked a question.
Smartphones aren't wearable computers? (Score:5, Insightful)
OK, the bluetooth headset seems to be winning out over the HUD as the main UI device. Other than that, how is a smartphone not a wearable computer?
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Because I don't wear my phone?
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Because I don't wear my phone?
This guy does! [zdnet.com]
Re:Smartphones aren't wearable computers? (Score:5, Insightful)
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>You just made a pacemakers sound cool. Too bad I have a good heart. Maybe I could get a pacemaker put in in Mexico so I could be a Cyborg?
If you work in IT, don't worry, just be patient. You'll be needing one in 10 - 20 years time.
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in the sense that people with pacemakers or cochlear implants aren't "cyborgs"
One of my friends has a pacemaker and I totally think that she's a cyborg. She doesn't deny it -- sometimes she even gets this look in her eye, you know, one of those "one day we're going to rise up and kill all of you meat-only people" looks.
It's hard to draw the line between basic humans and cyborgs, but I'd say that, at the very least, if you are reliant on some kind of electronic tech bound to or inside your body to survive (she'd die if she didn't have the pacemaker), then you're a cyborg.
On the down s
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He has a computer in his backpack and wears a headset. Compare with someone with a phone in their pocket, and wearing a bluetooth headset. I don't think even of them count as wearable computers. Yes, he's wearing a headset, and people talk about wearing bluetooth headsets with their phones too.
The computer's output is definitely wearable. The big question is the input. Do you need to get your smartphone out to type stufff? Does it have voice recognition? Do you have an input device in your pocket that you can use without looking at it? Does it track your eye movement?
Ideally it has both audible and visible wearable output, and several types of wearable input. But with even one type of practical output and one type of practical input, it'd count as a wearable computer in my book.
Re:Smartphones aren't wearable computers? (Score:4, Insightful)
OK, the bluetooth headset seems to be winning out over the HUD as the main UI device. Other than that, how is a smartphone not a wearable computer?
Wearable computers are supposed to make you look like a clumsy ass when using them. Smart phones typically don't unless you use a bluetooth headset.
Honestly, I think the conceit is a holdover of older technology where you ended up looking borgified with all the hardware you had strapped to your body. You used to have to wear heavy-duty batteries strapped to your waist, a funky keyboard strapped to your arm, doofy goggles, and the computer itself was on your back. Heady stuff for people who were used to computers having to be plugged into walls but this was even before laptops became practical, when luggables were still the latest and hottest shit.
The iPhone is pretty much representing the ideal of the Tricorder or the PADD from Star Trek. Pretty screen, touch interface, wireless everything, sound and video, cool stuff! The only way it could get any better is if you didn't even need to hold anything in your hands (or pay out the ass for the data plan). That'd be an ear piece that tucks away invisibly in your ear like a hearing aid, bone induction microphone imbedded inside the earpiece, and a display that either sits on contact lenses in your eyes or would be built into your glasses and either projects information onto the glass or shoots it onto your retina with low-powered lasers. Where would the computer be? Maybe still clipped to your hip like an iphone feeding data via wireless, or maybe it'll be small enough to be built into the hearing aid or contact lenses.
What's the ultimate UI goal? Terminator vision. Integrated lowlight vision, thermal vision, object tagging like a fighter plane's HUD, etc. The early concepts were mocked up for military maintenance crews, you could watch a video showing you what you're supposed to do as you do it.
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Yes, what you said, and, for the love of Christ, a way to "talk" without having a one-sided conversation with the freaking air. I hate that. Fifteen years ago you would have been sent to the loony bin for talking to voices in your head. Now, we assume one half of a bluetooth-enabled conversation. Seriously, how many completely, balls-out fucking crazy people are walking the streets who we assume are on the phone?
Why is that a problem? Suddenly crazies can pretend to be normal well-adjusted members of society too. Isn't that great?
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Exactly. A video interface just isn't (in general) a sensible UI when you are walking around and interacting with the world. I think an audio user interface is what is needed -- but there's little consumer interest at the moment.
There seems to be a lot of interest in this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH6r2tIaRXU [youtube.com]
Now if they could make it so you could wear bluetooth glasses that you can see through that don't make you look like a dork plenty of people would buy it.
You can read more about augmented reality o
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I appreciate your point, but would like to clarify something - it's not just "stupid children" and "stupid parents" that get into accidents because of distracting new toys. I'm fairly certain that "very smart" people also get distracted.
Unless you simply want to say that everyone that allows themselves to be distracted by "new toys" while driving is stupid. I could go along with that. It's more of a conscious decision sort of stupidity than a ignorance or intellectual issue. Very, very smart and intelle
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Inertia (Score:2)
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"Apply the Confetti Rule."
Resolution (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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You echoed my own thoughts exactly.
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Until one of these things can give me a full 1024x768 or better display
Only XGA? What is this? 1990?
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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 templ
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People are slugs (Score:2)
Because people are content with the status quo, same as always, and just as sad.
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The iPhone resolution is half that, and it's doing fairly well, last time I checked.
I think you need to redefine what you think of when you see the word "computer".
Transparent screen, augmented reality (Score:2)
It seems to me like the real killer app for a HUD is when you can have augmented reality [youtube.com] built into your normal glasses. It would normally require a transparent screen, though, or a virtually transparent screen (by mounting a camera on the HUD which shows you what is in the field of vision being blocked by the display.
Of course, there's some danger there, too. No doubt some dumbass would use that sort of thing while driving, only to have the "augmented reality" block his vision of real reality, thereby c
It's a decent hack, but the HUD is problematic (Score:4, Insightful)
At least for what I have in mind for a personal project. I haven't been able to find a decent optical see-through HMD that is affordable for regular people.
Liteye [liteye.com] makes a system for the military, but this seems like a rather limited system.
I wouldn't mind seeing an OLED system in this form factor [3m.com]. They're quite sturdy, allowing you to mount decent loads onto it, the bridge and resting pads are quite big making them rather comfortable even with a big load on them. The stems are wide allowing big mounting points for stuff like camera(s) and wires. Connect it to something like an nVidia Tegra [youtube.com] and you'd have an optical see through display, head mounted cameras and a small computer that can handle augmented reality with apparent ease.
But I suspect I'd be better off hoping to see Megan Fox splayed across my bed.
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Well, my friend... I have planned such a device for a loong time now. Technically, it's completely possible.
Give me an investor, and I'll sell you such a thing in some years.
Until now, their excuses mostly are the circular reasoning fallacy, that nobody would use or buy it because there are no applications or anything for it. (And there are no applications, because no device for it exists, of course.) So it's "too risky", with "no chance" to make a profit from it.
Stupid, stupid, stupid!
But imagine such stup
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Of course it's feasible.
Samsung presented a transparent OLED display [youtube.com] at CES 2009, another example from 2008 [youtube.com]. Sony presented a flexible OLED display [youtube.com] 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 cab
I was just thinking about this - buy! buy! sell! (Score:2)
Then the terrible reality sinks in... (Score:2, Funny)
What a huge leap in male contraception devices! (Score:4, Funny)
Still waiting for my bicycle HUD. (Score:3, Insightful)
When my bicycle HUD displays rear-views and navigational data I'll be all set.
/. effect has struck again (Score:2)
Been done (Score:2, Informative)
Hrmm. (Score:2)
I wonder. (Sometimes too much.)
Has anyone ever been accused/found guilty of using an article post on /. as a means to perpetrate a DDoS attack on a website?
A website being "Slashdotted" may not always be a good thing...especially if you were not wanting/expecting the sudden influx of viewers.
Just curious...
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You're doing it wrong! (Score:2)
The iPhone or a smart phone of some sort is just the beginning of a wearable pc, it's a component in the mess. Bluetooth and other wireless technologies need to further develop and better batteries. No component except the central unit should be bigger than a bluetooth headset. Until they get that far its never going to catch on.
We have the technology. We have the capability to build the world's first reasonable wearable computer.
Self Induced Cataracts (Score:2)
The thought of signs and arrows on my glasses or beamed directly into my retina doesn't sound like an improvement to me. It sounds more like purposefully giving myself a cataracts. Augmenting the way I see the world by improving my mind would be a much better thing.
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Re:No demand (Score:5, Insightful)
Instead of furiously wanking while trying to stand out from the crowd by wearing highly visible equipment, these guys should be finding a niche where mobile computing makes sense.
-Anybody working in a factory or a warehouse, where nobody cares how you look.
-Field service techs that need access to a ton of reference data.
-Anybody that climbs up a telephone pole or down a manhole.
-Anybody who needs use of both hands and access to information simultaneously to better do their jobs.
It's not exactly a "niche" market. Designing a wearable eyescreen that doesn't suck will be worth a ton of money.
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This is just pointless narcissism. There's no demand for this sort of thing currently.
I dunno. I could really use a wearable hud for my iPhone.
Sometimes I always feel rather awkward having people read my conversations especially taken out of context.
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... instead of mere assertions followed by insulting invective?
Yeah, like "This is just pointless narcissism ... furiously wanking ..."
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Where's the +1 Hilarious Hypocrisy mod when you need it?
Re:Holding my breath (Score:5, Interesting)
I still haven't seen one that truly interests me.
What I want to find is a setup that hooks up to both a long infrared (thermal imaging) and a short infrared (night vision) cameras, and overlays the images on reality through the glasses.
Imagine being able to not only see in the dark, but see the heat signatures from things.
My dad experimented with long infrared with the Army in the 60's and 70's. In some of the books that he had published, he demonstrated interesting things. The equipment was huge and static. He'd set up for a shot, take the picture, and then process it. At best, you were looking at hours to see the result. You could see a residual handprint on the wall, inefficiencies of insulation, etc.
Imagine seeing a real time feed overlaid over the world. Amazingly useful things would be seeing hotspots in a house, caused by overloaded power circuits or inefficient insulation. You may be able to see where someone had walked before you (temp changes in the footprints), touched items such as door knobs. Fire rescue would be able to see through smoke, take extra precautions on very hot doors, and very likely save more lives. Police could search darkened areas with ease, and avoid hostile suspects jumping out from the shadows. In every day use, you could see long distances ahead when you are driving at night, and even spot when someone you're talking to is lying.
It could open up a whole new world for us.
The idea wouldn't be very hard. You should be able to run a pair of fiber optic cables from the edge of a pair of glasses down to the cameras. A very small PC should be able to overlay the images in real time, and then display them through something resembling the glasses shown. I've been watching for cameras that are small enough, and are affordable. I have yet to find the kind of gear that I could afford. :(
An extra overlay of other data could be useful too, without causing an information overload. The time, ambient temperature, some GPS data (heading, speed, altitude). Things that you'd see on TV are a bit fanciful right now, such as threat detection. Determining a car is on an intercept path and may cause an impact is a bit beyond what a portable PC can do, but a human can determine it quickly by seeing it.
For fire/rescue and law enforcement, I would see it being amazingly useful to transmit that data back to a central location. Where or what happened? It would all be available.
I know a lot of people hate cops, but a lot of them are actually doing something very useful for our protection. We simply don't see it all the time, because most of our interaction is with traffic cops who may or may not be right, but they'll write the ticket anyways.
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