Tag Archives: WearableComputing

Google is taking Glass on a road trip across the US, try it on in a city near you

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Google is taking Glass on a road trip across the US, offers everyone a chance to try it

It's still not ready to sell Glass to non-"Explorers", but Google is now at least willing to give more folks an opportunity to try it. The company announced today that's its kicking off a road trip across the US, which will see it make stops in a number of cities where you'll be able to meet some of the team behind Glass and try on the device yourself. That begins in Durham, North Carolina on October 5th, although the company isn't confirming any additional cities just yet (for the time being, it's only saying to keep an eye on its Google+ page). If you're able to make it to Durham, though, you can RSVP for the event at the source link below.

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Source: Glass Durham, Google+

Ultra-thin e-skin could lead to advances in medicine, cool wearable computing (video)

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DNP eskin

Remember the names Martin Kaltenbrunner and Takao Someya -- that way, you'll have someone to blame when kids start pointing and laughing at gadgets we consider high-tech today. Leading a team of University of Tokyo researchers, they have recently developed a flexible, skin-like material that can detect pressure while also being virtually indestructible. Think of the possibilities: with a thickness of one nanometer, this could be used to create a second skin that can monitor your vital signs or medical implants that you can barely feel, if at all. Also, temperature sensors could be added to make life-like skin for prosthetics... or even robots! Like other similar studies, however, the researchers have a long journey ahead before we see this super-thin material in medicine. Since it could lead to bendy gadgets and wearable electronics first, don't be surprised if your children call iPhones "so 2013" in the not-too-distant future.

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Via: iO9, ABC Science, New Scientist

Source: Nature

The origin of ‘OK, Glass,’ as told by Google’s Amanda Rosenberg

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"OK, Glass." It's a phrase that's become synonymous with Google's trailblazing wearable tech, and with good reason. As the headset's hotword, it must be uttered by the user (with varying levels of self-consciousness) to activate Glass' menu. Amanda Rosenberg, the Product Marketing Manager for Project Glass, took to her Google+ page today to share both the phrase's history and a few scrapped ideas. During dinner with Mat Balez, the Glass Project Manager, Rosenberg learned that the product required a simple, culturally resonant term that would let Glass know that it was go-time. Accompanied by what we can only assume was a choir of angels singing, Rosenberg realized that "OK, Glass" would be both functional and subtle enough to not embarrass users in public. It's an interesting anecdote, which you can read in full at the source link, but we have to admit . . . we're kind of sad "Go go, Glass" was never given a chance.

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Source: Amanda Rosenberg (Google+)

Valve’s ‘Sea of Cubes,’ and the challenges of working with augmented reality

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Valve's 'Sea of Cubes,' and the challenges of working with augmented reality

Valve Software's experiments with virtual reality, most recently exposed as a "VR Mode" of its popular free-to-play shooter Team Fortress 2, are actually just an offshoot of the company's longer-term goal: augmented reality. The dozens of AR markers plastered to the three walls of Valve programmer Joe Ludwig's shared office are testament to that (seen above). "We're mostly looking at a software level. We've talked to a bunch of different display vendors on the augmented reality side, and none of them are quite ready to go yet," Ludwig says when we prod him for more on Valve's AR efforts. One thing's for sure: we didn't spot any Google Glasses on-site, nor products from other companies producing wearable computers, not to mention in-house glasses.

"We've done some gameplay prototypes," he says. "We've done some test pattern type stuff. But that's basically it. There's an application that we call 'Sea of Cubes' that fills the room you're in with cubes just to basically test a bunch of different tracking methods and displays." Thus far, though, Valve isn't much deeper than that. A variety of different cameras mounted on tripods can be seen throughout Ludwig's office. A $30,000 3D camera, which looks an awful lot like a giant Microsoft Kinect, sits in one corner. Ludwig tells us it can pinpoint specific objects with incredible accuracy, though he wouldn't share much more. It's not clear what all of this means for Valve's AR work, but it's clearly still a work-in-progress. Indeed, when the company first started talking wearable computing, Valve's Michael Abrash called it "more research than development." So, what fruit has come of that research since last April?

Gallery: Valve - Team Fortress 2 VR Mode and Joe Ludwig

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Editorial: iWatch app speculation is filler, not killer

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Editorial iWatch app speculation is filler, not killer

Innovation is problem-solving. Radical innovation is seeing normalcy as problematic, and solving it. That level of invention, which solves a generally unrecognized problem to create a new product category, or user experience, can be difficult to recognize in the conceptual stage. A far-reaching idea can seem trivial if it solves routineness. Sometimes it takes the product itself, the manifested experience, to demonstrate how to rise above the customary. Email solved postal mail, which died another incremental death last week by announcing a proposal to end Saturday letter deliveries. Cell phones solved the disconnect between phones and the walking-around life. Mobile apps solved the gap between computers and cell phones. Perhaps HTML5 will solve apps.

So forgive me if I'm being small-minded, but Bruce Tognazzini's speculative manifesto about an Apple iWatch fails to make a convincing futurist case for the imagined device -- despite whipping up a whirlwind of attention. What is the future of wearable computing?

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Our augmented selves: The promise of wearable computing

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Our augmented selves The promise of wearable computing

By Donald Melanson and Michael Gorman

It's been an interesting year for Google's most famous side project. After emerging from the company's suitably mysterious X Lab in April, Glass appeared across the roundtable from Charlie Rose, gave conference attendees a skydiver's eye view at Google I/O, strutted down the catwalk at New York Fashion Week and shared the stage with California Governor Jerry Brown as he signed a bill into law allowing self-driving cars on the state's roads.

Yet, there's still more that we don't know about Google Glass than we know about it, despite its status as the highest-profile attempt at making wearable computing the next big thing. Public demonstrations of the tech have so far only hinted at its full potential. The promise of Glass echoes that of wearable computing in general, a promise that's remained largely unfulfilled despite decades of research driven by everyone from the military to DIYers.

Continue reading Our augmented selves: The promise of wearable computing

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Microsoft patent application details head-mounted display used to augment live events

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Microsoft patent application details headmounted display used to augment live events

It's no secret that Microsoft has been experimenting plenty with wearable computing and augmented reality -- just take a look at some of Microsoft Research's projects -- but a patent application published today has offered a peek at one possible AR application the company has yet to demonstrate. While not describing the device itself, the patent application details how a head-mounted display could be used to augment live events in realtime with relevant information (like stats during a baseball game, as pictured above). To do so, the system would recognize both where you are and what objects are in your field of view, and then display the supplemental information that'd be continually updated based on what's happening or where you're looking. If that all sounds a little familiar, it's because leaked details purporting to lay out Microsoft's future Xbox plans also described some AR glasses, dubbed "Fortaleza Glasses," which were similarly said to provide "realtime information on people, places and objects." At the time of that leak, those were said to be coming sometime in 2014.

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Via: TechCrunch

Source: USPTO

Valve’s first hardware beta starting by next year, wearable computing still far off

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Valve Software's hardware division is still in its infancy. Despite having existed for over a year, recruitment is still its primary concern -- "prototyping is almost secondary," longtime inventor/hacker/now Valve employee Jeri Ellsworth told us in an interview this week. As the team ramps up, production becomes more and more prolific, of course; Ellsworth lights up when she talks about the work her team is doing now. She gets verbose when asked about corporate culture at Valve, about how she's never worked at a company where risk and failure are so acceptable -- even encouraged. She's visibly excited about the prototypes she's creating at Valve's new prototyping facility, but manages to contain herself enough to not let slip exactly what her and her team are working on.

When asked what the team's immediate goals are, she obliquely states, "To make Steam games more fun to play in your living room." That's the team's one-year goal, at least. The challenge is making games that require a mouse and keyboard palatable to people who are used to a controller, or to people who just don't want to migrate PC controls to the comfort of their living room. Working in tandem with Steam's newly beta'd "Big Picture Mode," Ellsworth's team is creating a hardware solution to the control barriers found in many Steam games. She wouldn't give any hints as to what that solution is exactly, but she left no options off the table -- from Phantom Lapboard-esque solutions to hybrid controllers.

Regardless, it sounds like gamers will have a chance to give feedback on those designs, as Valve's hardware team is planning a beta for its various products. Ellsworth is hoping to have one for the team's first product in the coming year -- we'll of course know much more about the product by then, she says. Internal beta tests are already underway, and a variety of the team's prototypes are available in the office for other Valve employees to tool around with. The next step is getting prototypes into gamers hands -- she says Valve already has a production line for short runs, making a beta possible -- and iterating on design before launch. As for how the beta will be handled, she posits it'll be tied to Steam in some way, but no logistics are anywhere near nailed down.

Continue reading Valve's first hardware beta starting by next year, wearable computing still far off

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Valve's first hardware beta starting by next year, wearable computing still far off originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 18 Sep 2012 17:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google Glass makes catwalk debut at New York Fashion Week

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Google Glass makes rare appearance at New York Fashion Week

Google Glass' early luxury brand pricing appears to have put it in good stead, with the elite at New York's Fashion Week getting an early close-up look at Google's wearable camera future. Diane von Furstenberg, who's no stranger to a tech tie-in, has added the lightweight frames to her latest show, using them to make a documentary about fashion's creative process. The project is set to appear on von Furstenberg's Google+ page later this week, but if you're not a world-renowned fashion designer (or model), we'd be paying more attention to that two-year wait.

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Google Glass makes catwalk debut at New York Fashion Week originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Sep 2012 04:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Georgia Tech develops self-charging battery that marches to the owner’s beat

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Georgia Tech develops selfcharging battery with laws of physics still intact

One of the last times we saw the concept of a self-recharging battery, it was part of a high-minded Nokia patent whose ideas still haven't seen the light of day. Researchers at Georgia Tech are more inclined to put theory into practice. Starting from a regular lithium-ion coin battery, the team has replaced the usual divider between electrodes with a polyvinylidene difluoride film whose piezoelectric nature produces a charging action inside that gap through just a little pressure, with no outside voltage required to make the magic happen. The developers have even thumbed their noses at skeptics by very literally walking the walk -- slipping the test battery under a shoe sole gives it a proper dose of energy with every footstep. At this stage, the challenge mostly involves ramping up the maximum power through upgrades such as more squeezable piezoelectrics. Georgia Tech hasn't progressed so far as to have production plans in mind; it's nonetheless close enough that we could see future forms of wearable computing that rarely need an electrical pick-me-up.

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Georgia Tech develops self-charging battery that marches to the owner's beat originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 19 Aug 2012 04:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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