Lifeboat Foundation

We can immediately supersede the Mojo Vision approach for retinal projection, with an interim projection system using metalenses. The Mojo Lens approach is to try to put everything, including the television screen, projection method and energy source onto one contact lens. With recent breakthroughs in scaling up the size of metalenses, an approach utilizing a combination of a contact metalens and a small pair of glasses can be utilized. This is emphatically not the Google Glass approach, which did not use modern metalenses. The system would work as follows:

1)Thin TV cameras are mounted on both sides of a pair of wearable glasses.

2)The images from these cameras are projected via projection metalenses in a narrow beam to the center of the pupils.

Continue reading “Interim Retinal Projection With Metalenses” »

Harvard’s Capasso Group has scaled up the achromatic metalens to 2mm in diameter. That may not sound like much, but it is plenty for virtual reality contact lenses. The human pupil is 7mm at widest. These guys are going to beat Mojo Lens to the finish line for smart contact lenses.

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Here’s how it worked: red buoys placed along the river walk indicated the locations of the digital artworks. Visitors had to install an app on their phones called Acute Art. Pointing their phones at the area around the buoys, they’d see the digital sculptures appear.

The artwork didn’t follow any particular theme, but rather consisted of everything from a giant, furry spider to a wriggling octopus to a levitating spiritual leader. Artists included Norwegian Bjarne Melgaard, Chinese Cao Fei, Argentine Tomas Saraceno, German Alicja Kwade, American KAWS, and several others.

Continue reading “Watch London’s Cool, Quirky Augmented Reality Art Exhibit at Home” »

The process of systems integration (SI) functionally links together infrastructure, computing systems, and applications. SI can allow for economies of scale, streamlined manufacturing, and better efficiency and innovation through combined research and development.

New to the systems integration toolbox are the emergence of transformative technologies and, especially, the growing capability to integrate functions due to exponential advances in computing, data analytics, and material science. These new capabilities are already having a significant impact on creating our future destinies.

The systems integration process has served us well and will continue to do so. But it needs augmenting. We are on the cusp of scientific discovery that often combines the physical with the digital—the Techno-Fusion or merging of technologies. Like Techno-Fusion in music, Techno-Fusion in technologies is really a trend that experiments and transcends traditional ways of integration. Among many, there are five grouping areas that I consider good examples to highlight the changing paradigm. They are: Smart Cities and the Internet of Things (IoT); Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), Quantum and Super Computing, and Robotics; Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality Technologies (VR); Health, Medicine, and Life Sciences Technologies; and Advanced Imaging Science.

AR cloud technology enables the unification of the physical and digital world to create immersive experiences. This technology uses a common interface to deliver persistent, collaborative and contextual digital content overlaid onto people, objects and locations. This provides users with information and services directly tied to every aspect of their physical surroundings.

The AR cloud will use a common interface to overlay digital content onto people, objects, and locations in persistent, interactive way.

In 2016, combined venture investments in VR, AR, and mixed reality (MR) exceeded $1.25 billion. In 2019, that number increased more than 3X to $4.1 billion. And today, major players are bringing new, second-generation VR headsets to market that have the power to revolutionize the VR industry, as well as countless others. Already, VR headset sales volumes are expected to reach 30 million per year by 2022. For example, Facebook’s new Oculus Quest 2 headset has outsold its predecessor by 5X in the initial weeks of the product launch. With the FAANG tech giants pouring billions into improving VR hardware, the VR space is massively heating up. In this blog, we will dive into a brief history of VR, recent investment surges, and the future of this revolutionary technology.

“Virtual reality is not a media experience,” explains Bailenson. “When it’s done well, it’s an actual experience. In general our findings show that VR causes more behavior changes, causes more engagement, causes more influence than other types of traditional media.”

Nor is empathy the only emotion VR appears capable of training. In research conducted at USC, psychologist Skip Rizzo has had considerable success using virtual reality to treat PTSD in soldiers. Other scientists have extended this to the full range of anxiety disorders.

Continue reading “VR leaps into the disruptive phase” »

SMART CONTACT LENSES are coming during this decade, probably within a few years. This company claims it is ready to launch one that will 1) give night vision to the wearer; 2) record video of what you see with your eyes in real time; 3) zoom magnification up to 60 times larger than regular vision, so if you see something far away, you can see what it is; 4) display “augmented” images on your visual field. This means you will be able to see everything normally, BUT can see a text of the weather, or map directions, etc. Eventually, such contact lenses will replace the smart phone, and you will dial, talk, etc, without use of your hands. I would like this to interface with instant language translation, to make learning a language five times faster!

This innovation, called iLens, looks unbelievable on paper. Associated with a smartphone via Bluetooth, this concept would allow you to record your daily memories in video. A telephoto camera embedded in the lens would allow you to zoom digitally up to 60x to enhance your eyesight and discover details invisible to the naked eye. This digital feat would also allow you to see perfectly in the dark.

ILens would also display augmented reality information, for instance to keep a certain distance from others, or practical information regarding air quality or the weather.

Continue reading “Contact lenses worthy of James Bond to zoom and film in a blink of an eye” »

CSL’s Systems and Networking Research Group (SyNRG) is defining a new sub-area of mobile technology that they call “earable computing.” The team believes that earphones will be the next significant milestone in wearable devices, and that new hardware, software, and apps will all run on this platform.

“The leap from today’s earphones to ‘earables’ would mimic the transformation that we had seen from basic phones to smartphones,” said Romit Roy Choudhury, professor in electrical and computer engineering (ECE). “Today’s smartphones are hardly a calling device anymore, much like how tomorrow’s earables will hardly be a smartphone accessory.”

Instead, the group believes tomorrow’s earphones will continuously sense human behavior, run acoustic augmented reality, have Alexa and Siri whisper just-in-time information, track user motion and health, and offer seamless security, among many other capabilities.

It’s not a stretch to say that stretchable sensors could change the way soft robots function and feel. In fact, they will be able to feel quite a lot.

Cornell researchers have created a fiber-optic sensor that combines low-cost LEDs and dyes, resulting in a stretchable “skin” that detects deformations such as pressure, bending and strain. This sensor could give soft robotic systems – and anyone using augmented reality technology – the ability to feel the same rich, tactile sensations that mammals depend on to navigate the natural world.