Bionic Contact Lenses Point to a Heads-Anywhere Display. It remains somewhat speculative, to be sure. But a group of researchers has made advances towards a Terminator-like era of augmented vision. Researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle recently established that their “bionic contact lenses,” which could someday stream text and images right in front of their wearer’s eyeballs, are “safe and feasible,” reports BBC News. Safety tests in rabbits have shown no ill effects, meaning research will continue. How would such a device work? After all, it’s difficult to focus on something held too close to your nose, let alone something projected directly on your eye. The researchers, led by Professor Babak Parviz, have already solved this problem, in collaboration with researchers at Aalto University in Finland. The device is still best characterized as a prototype, and a rough one at that.
It’s fun to speculate on the ways people might use the device to augment their lives. Medical applications wouldn’t need to end there. CMU Researchers Turn Any Surface Into A Touchscreen. Soon you, too, will be able to talk to the hand. A new interface created jointly by Microsoft and the Carnegie Mellon Human Computer Interaction Institute allows for interfaces to be displayed on any surface, including notebooks, body parts, and tables.
The UI is completely multitouch and the “shoulder-worn” system will locate the surface you’re working on in 3D space, ensuring the UI is always accessible. It uses a picoprojector and a 3D scanner similar to the Kinect. The product is called OmniTouch and it supports “clicking” with a finger on any surface as well as controls that sense finger position while hovering a hand over a surface. So far the researchers have tested drawing and “crosshair” interaction with the system and it has worked well on arms, hands, notebooks, and tables. The Youtube video is private right now but I’ve contacted CMU. Project Page. Kinect Turns Any Surface Into a Touch Screen A new prototype can transform a notebook into a notebook computer, a wall into an interactive display, and the palm of your hand into a smart phone display.
In fact, researchers at Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University say their new shoulder-mounted device, called OmniTouch, can turn any nearby surface into an ad hoc interactive touch screen. OmniTouch works by bringing together a miniature projector and an infrared depth camera, similar to the kind used in Microsoft’s Kinect game console, to create a shoulder-worn system designed to interface with mobile devices such as smart phones, says co-inventor Chris Harrison, a postgraduate researcher at Carnegie Mellon’s Human-Computer Interaction Institute in Pittsburgh and a former intern at Microsoft Research. Instead of relying on screens, buttons, or keys, the system monitors the user’s environment for any available surfaces and projects an interactive display onto one or more of them. Whoa - Apple Wins a 3D Display & Imaging System Patent Stunner. Background & Overview of Future 3D Displays & Devices Modern three-dimensional ("3D") imaging and display technologies are employed in widely diverse environments and technologies.
Examples include medical diagnostics, entertainment, flight simulation, robotics, education, animation, biomechanical studies, virtual reality, and so forth. There are numerous 3D input devices including, for example, variations on the computer mouse or touch pad. Ordinarily, these are manipulated in just two dimensions, the x-axis and the y-axis. In 3D, however, such constructs could be indirect, time consuming, artificial, and could require considerable practice and training to do well. Passive 3D Input One of the preferred methods of 3D input is passive input, wherein a device automatically detects and measures a target in 3D. 3D Input via Light Attenuation Another 3D method for measuring distance utilizes light attenuation.
What 3D Devices should Deliver for Consumer Products Apple's 3D System Overview. Glasses Packed With Smartphone Tech Could Help Visually Impaired People 'See' Again. Glasses have been passively correcting human vision for centuries, using tricks of light to compensate for various visual impairments. But there are some conditions--like age-related macular degeneration--that simple lenses can't correct.
So Oxford University researchers are getting proactive with a pair of frames packed with technologies usually found in gaming consoles and smartphones to give greater independence and self sufficiency to those suffering from more serious optical ailments. Our smartphones contain all kinds of cool tech that is cheap, easy to come by, and usually wasted on snapping and sharing pics of our cats doing cute things. Likewise, peripherals like our gaming controllers and the Kinect pack all kinds of cheap and powerful sensor tech.
Many of these problems are often brought on by age, when degradation of optical tissues renders parts of the eye unresponsive to light. There's a certain degree of learning involved. [PhysOrg] Thin Displays as Wristbands. The U.S. Army is testing a prototype “watch” that’s lightweight and thin and has a full-color display. This display is built on flexible materials encased in a rugged plastic case and can be worn on a wristband to display streaming video and other information. It uses newly developed phosphorescent materials that are efficient at converting electricity into red, blue, and green light, which means the display needs less power to work. Most phones, laptops, and TVs today use liquid-crystal displays (LCDs) controlled by electronics built on glass. For consumers, flexible OLEDs promise portable electronics with beautiful screens that don’t drain battery life and won’t shatter when dropped.
The new display prototypes use efficient OLED materials developed by Universal Display of Ewing, New Jersey, and are built on foil-backed electronic controls developed by LG Display, headquartered in Seoul, South Korea. Will Smart Contact Lenses Be the Bluetooth Headsets of the Future? Imagine instant access to the latest market segment information at a meeting, or seeing the fourth quarter earnings for a company in (literally) the blink of an eye.
Although it might sound like something from a science fiction novel, scientists at the University of Washington are working on solar powered contact lenses with transparent LEDs embedded onto the lens. This technology could be applied in countless ways, from health monitoring to text translation right in front of the wearer's eyes. In 2006, my team at SKD designed a very similar concept for our "Cautionary Visions" project. Analyzing current trends in technology and popular culture, from emerging demands for constant connection to the increasingly blurred boundaries between natural and artificial, my designers imagined the dark alleys down which these trends could take us. Now it seems like our idea might become a reality. And the more I think about it, the more it seems like this concept could be the new Bluetooth headset.
Why the future of mobile is screenless, touchless. "A phone today is a a value-added service, a 'teleputer,' a creature born with genes coming from a cell phone and a personal computer," according to independent researcher Szymon Slupik. Speaking yesterday at the invitation-only Emerging Communications Conference & Awards (eComm), the Krakow-based futurist explained that by 2020, a mobile phone as we know it will disappear, evolving into a device linking our senses directly with senses of other people or with machines.
What device will displace the role of today's smartphone: Internet glasses. Internet eyeglasses concept presented by Szymon Slupik at eComm 2011 "Voice was always organized in sessions with a beginning and an end. Today we have threads. So how do we get there and when? Laser based displays - MEMS (microelectromechanical systems)-based laser projectors can display images directly on our retinas while not blocking our sight, enabling mixed reality vision. After his talk, Slupik gave me another example. Window to the World (CIID/Toyota) Sharp develops a 3D screen for mobile gadgets. Sharp will launch an LCD panel for mobile devices this year that can show images with the illusion of 3D without requiring viewers to wear special glasses. To get the 3D illusion viewers must hold the screen about 30 centimeters in front of them -- about the same distance at which a cell phone or digital camera is typically held.
If they get the angle right, they will see an image that appears to have depth; if they get it wrong they will see a blurred image that's difficult to decipher. The screen can be switched between 3D and conventional 2D modes. This is accomplished with a switchable layer inside the screen, called a parallax barrier, that splits light from the screen and directs it towards the right or left eyes when energized.
To continue reading, register here to become an Insider It's FREE to join IDG News Service - Sharp will launch an LCD panel for mobile devices this year that can show images with the illusion of 3D without requiring viewers to wear special glasses.