Thursday, February 23, 2012

google reality augmentation

NYTimes | It wasn’t so long ago that legions of people began walking the streets, talking to themselves.

On closer inspection, many of them turned out to be wearing tiny earpieces that connected wirelessly to their smartphones.

What’s next? Perhaps throngs of people in thick-framed sunglasses lurching down the streets, cocking and twisting their heads like extras in a zombie movie.

That’s because later this year, Google is expected to start selling eyeglasses that will project information, entertainment and, this being a Google product, advertisements onto the lenses. The glasses are not being designed to be worn constantly — although Google engineers expect some users will wear them a lot — but will be more like smartphones, used when needed, with the lenses serving as a kind of see-through computer monitor.

“It will look very strange to onlookers when people are wearing these glasses,” said William Brinkman, graduate director of the computer science and software engineering department at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. “You obviously won’t see what they can from the behind the glasses. As a result, you will see bizarre body language as people duck or dodge around virtual things.”

Mr. Brinkman, whose work focuses on augmented reality or the projection of a layer of information over physical objects, said his students had experimented on their own with virtual games and obstacle courses. “It looks really weird to outsiders when you watch people navigate these spaces,” he said.

They have not seen the Google glasses. Few people have, because they are being built in the Google X offices, a secretive laboratory near Google’s main Mountain View, Calif., campus where engineers and scientists are also working on robots and space elevators.

The glasses will use the same Android software that powers Android smartphones and tablets. Like smartphones and tablets, the glasses will be equipped with GPS and motion sensors. They will also contain a camera and audio inputs and outputs.

Several people who have seen the glasses, but who are not allowed to speak publicly about them, said that the location information was a major feature of the glasses. Through the built-in camera on the glasses, Google will be able to stream images to its rack computers and return augmented reality information to the person wearing them. For instance, a person looking at a landmark could see detailed historical information and comments about it left by friends. If facial recognition software becomes accurate enough, the glasses could remind a wearer of when and how he met the vaguely familiar person standing in front of him at a party. They might also be used for virtual reality games that use the real world as the playground.

19 comments:

Big Don said...

And, as with cellfones and texting, people will be *wearing* them while DRIVING...!!

CNu said...

 Getting that GPS navigator data heads-up, instead of on your little cellphone screen will be the bomb jack!!! As long as they don't look like those dumbassed Oakleys, I can't wait...,

nanakwame said...

 Dissonance of the culling that is to occur, Doc? Can't wait to see the fashion cyborgs. 

CNu said...

Yet another momentous signpost up ahead making my palms sweat in anticipation....,

nanakwame said...

http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/1965-americans-robots.html

Dale Asberry said...

 I've been excited about those prospects ever since companies started building 'visors'.

Ed Dunn said...

so let me get this straight....

1. We have African-American right here in Atlanta leading the discussion worldwide on augmented reality but no mention of it by yall.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfFTMlXPYEQ

2. I already indicated that I'm working on an augmented reality application for this summer and already release technical specs on how it will be done.

But when the New York Times right a fluff article on "Google Goggles" yall want to go apeshit with excitement like Google, Inc. doing something extremely innovative and groundbreaking...

Me and my son is already working on a drone that feed data back and perform augmented reality on the video feed..I guess if I take out my name and say Google is doing a drone like that, yall probably go apeshit with excitement over that too....

Brothas don't get no credit nowadays...

nanakwame said...

And we ain't - We been playing with augmented reality and augmented intelligence for a very long time

CNu said...

1. We have African-American right here in Atlanta leading the
discussion worldwide on augmented reality but no mention of it by yall.


oops, minor oversight, um, er, ah, PHUKKA-MICROSOFT!!!!!

whew...., I feel much better now.

{ta loco - leading a "world-wide" discussion....,}

Big Don said...

You will be *really* excited when that Kenworth/Mack/Peterbilt grille in your rear-view is piloted by a salivating dude flipping thru porn heads-up in his shades...

Ed Dunn said...

 The technology is not Microsoft, it has to be ubiquitous where we get readings back from the cell phone and upload to our cloud for processing and we send back data to display on the screen.

I may been a little over-dramatic with primate-fecal references but my point is I seen this before where an African brotha already setup a SMS system that let African merchants query grain prices to sell at market rates at their local village. Then Google make a video years later stating they doing a pilot on this same concept and brothas and sistas running around screaming Google! like the brotha who did it a year earlier was not newsworthy.

Ed Dunn said...

 How so could you be playing with it? Geo-location was not possible until 5 years ago and magnetometers where only recently available to mobile devices just 2 years ago. In addition, GPU chips were only installed in mobile devices to render these video feeds just one year ago. It would have been a serious feat to create realistic augmented reality without these items. 

CNu said...

I'm really amused that your antediluvian imagination is so fertile...,

Dale Asberry said...

If he didn't really exist, you'd have to make him up!

John Kurman said...

fuschia thong? Eight inch heels?

That's gonna require google beer goggles.

CNu said...

Such an abomination could only be put right by blinding, cleansing light and a mushroom cloud....,

John Kurman said...

I nominate the flashing mushroom cloud symbol as the augmented reality heads up display warning for recently inhabited restrooms where particularly pungent doogies have just been given a burial at sea. Other than that, I suppose we just have to see which 'apps' prove worthwhile.

CNu said...

we need to trademark that shit right thurr quick, fast, and in a hurry - cause you KNOW that many of those long-haul trucker type muhphuggahs what's TOTALLY rotten inside and routinely give birth to that stench from hell - HAVE THE NERVE TO BE PROUD of their advanced cancerous condition and the collapsed state of their biome allowing for such godawful alimentary work-product.

THEY ARE PROUD OF BEING ABLE TO KNOCK BUZZARDS OFF SHIT WAGONS AT 300 yards!!!!!

So we foursquare the rotten zombies, heads-up their whereabouts and toxic bowel movements, and then make that data available to the innocents unfortunate enough to subsequently cross intersect the toxic Chernobyl paths that these fools leave in their wake.

That shit is plain genius John.....,

 

John Kurman said...

All we needs now is a low-end manufacturer for the excessive-mercaptan sensor chip, and a stickem surface for restroom emplacement. And then package it with a concentrated air freshener worn on the hip. Fore-warned and fore-armed.

Then again, didn't Vernor Vinge explore the idea that universal surveillance would hasten the end of civilization?

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