Speaker 1: Get in text with technology with tex Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tex Stuff.
Speaker 1: I am your host, Jonathan Strickland, and today I'm going
Speaker 1: to augment your reality, or at least tell you what
Speaker 1: augmented reality and a R is all about. And if
Speaker 1: this seems like it's deja vu, that means you are
Speaker 1: a long time listener of tech stuff, because we did
Speaker 1: our episode about a are way back in two thousand nine.
Speaker 1: That's when Chris Palette was my co host and together
Speaker 1: we recorded an episode that we called What in the
Speaker 1: World Is Augmented Reality? And that was a pretty short
Speaker 1: overview of the concept, like twenty minutes long, and that
Speaker 1: included two different listener males. So I thought I would
Speaker 1: do a deeper dive, a bigger explanation about what augment
Speaker 1: the reality is, what it's all about, how it works,
Speaker 1: and sort of the applications we might put a R
Speaker 1: toward things that, you know, was it good for tons
Speaker 1: of stuff? As it turns out, So the first thing
Speaker 1: we should do, it's probably defined some terms, because if
Speaker 1: you haven't really looked into augmented reality and you aren't
Speaker 1: familiar with a R, you might just be lost. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna define it all for you right now, because that's
Speaker 1: the kind of stand up guy I am. Technically speaking,
Speaker 1: augmented reality is using digital information to enhance or augment
Speaker 1: and experience in our physical real world. So the way
Speaker 1: we usually see this implemented involves some sort of display
Speaker 1: that has an image of the real world on it,
Speaker 1: and it overlays digital information on top of that image.
Speaker 1: So think of like a camera's viewfinder, like an LCD
Speaker 1: screen on a camera, and it actually labels the buildings
Speaker 1: that are in view. When you're out on the street
Speaker 1: and you hold the camera up, or a smartphone or
Speaker 1: even a wearable device like a head mounted display that
Speaker 1: you can look through so you can see the real world.
Speaker 1: You're not just staring at a screen, or if you
Speaker 1: are staring at a screen, you're staring at a video
Speaker 1: feed that is provided by an external camera amounted just
Speaker 1: on the other side of the screen. So it's like
Speaker 1: you're looking through a display in the first place, but
Speaker 1: then on top of that view you have this digital information.
Speaker 1: That's the most common implementation we talk about, but it's
Speaker 1: not the only one. Augmented reality does not have to
Speaker 1: only be or even involve visual information at all. You
Speaker 1: could have audio only augmented reality, for example, But the
Speaker 1: whole idea is that it's something that has created digitally
Speaker 1: to enhance your experience in the real world. Now we
Speaker 1: can contrast this with the concept of virtual reality. Virtual reality,
Speaker 1: of course, is a term where you create an experience
Speaker 1: completely through computer generated means a computer is making all
Speaker 1: the things you see and here, and maybe even beyond
Speaker 1: that if you have really sophisticated UH setups, so you
Speaker 1: might have some haptic feedback. Haptic refers to your sense
Speaker 1: of touch, so if you have haptic feedback, that means
Speaker 1: you're getting information feedback through your sense of touch. Common
Speaker 1: example of this is a rumble pack inside a game controller,
Speaker 1: where you know you fire a gun and a first
Speaker 1: person shooter and your controller rumbles as a result, letting
Speaker 1: you know that you are in fact, unleashing virtual destruction
Speaker 1: upon all you survey. Well, the same thing can be
Speaker 1: true with virtual reality set up. So virtual reality is
Speaker 1: all about constructing an artificial reality a simulated reality. Augmented
Speaker 1: reality is all about enhance and seeing the one that
Speaker 1: we are actually in. And then there's also mixed reality.
Speaker 1: Mixed reality is kind of sort of in between the two.
Speaker 1: You might have some physical objects within a room that
Speaker 1: are also mapped to a virtual environment, and then you
Speaker 1: use something like a head molded display to enter the
Speaker 1: virtual environment. That's what looks like you're inside. But you
Speaker 1: have physical objects in the room around you that are
Speaker 1: also mapped to the virtual world, Meaning you could pick
Speaker 1: up this physical object and you would see that reflected
Speaker 1: within the virtual world, where you might pick up a
Speaker 1: sword and shield or move a chair or something along
Speaker 1: those lines. So augmented reality, virtual reality, and mixed reality
Speaker 1: are all kind of inter related, so much so that
Speaker 1: their histories also are very much inter related. And there's
Speaker 1: some people who try to collect these different technologies, these
Speaker 1: different approaches and put them under a co an umbrella,
Speaker 1: and they tend to use the phrase alternate reality, which
Speaker 1: is unfortunate because that's also a r but alternate reality
Speaker 1: is kind of the umbrella for virtual, augmented and mixed reality.
Speaker 1: Uh that that that kind of gives you the definition
Speaker 1: of those basic terms, and it is important to understand
Speaker 1: them because they're becoming more and more important today. You
Speaker 1: are already probably aware of a lot of VR headsets
Speaker 1: that are out there on the market as well as VR.
Speaker 1: Uh Well, they're they're kind of like cases that you
Speaker 1: slide your smartphone into, so your smartphone becomes the actual
Speaker 1: display on a VR headset. The headset itself is more
Speaker 1: or less just a head mounted case for your phone.
Speaker 1: We've seen a lot of those come out over the
Speaker 1: last few years. We've also seen a lot of a
Speaker 1: R applications come out, typically for things like iPads and smartphones,
Speaker 1: but we've also seen some hardware come out that for
Speaker 1: wearable devices that falls into the augmented reality category, stuff
Speaker 1: like Google Glass, which I'll talk about more a little
Speaker 1: bit later in this episode. For augmented reality to work
Speaker 1: to get this enhanced experience of reality around you, there
Speaker 1: are a lot of technological components that have to come
Speaker 1: together so that you actually do get experience that is meaningful.
Speaker 1: You know, you have to have technology that quote unquote
Speaker 1: knows where you are and what you are looking at
Speaker 1: or what you are close to in order to get
Speaker 1: that augmented experience. It wouldn't do me any good if
Speaker 1: I put on an augmented reality headset, for example, and
Speaker 1: stared at let's say, a famous painting, and instead of
Speaker 1: getting information about the famous painting I see an exploded
Speaker 1: view of an car engine That would make no sense.
Speaker 1: So you have to build in technologies in order for
Speaker 1: the a R to understand what it is you're trying
Speaker 1: to do and to augment that experience, which meant that
Speaker 1: we had to wait a pretty good long time for
Speaker 1: the various technologies that we used to to create this
Speaker 1: relationship to mature to a point where it was possible.
Speaker 1: Sometimes we had technologies that would allow us to do it,
Speaker 1: but it required uh tethering headsets to very large computers,
Speaker 1: which meant that you didn't have really any mobility, and
Speaker 1: uh it really limited the usefulness of the actual application.
Speaker 1: In other cases, you could say things like your head
Speaker 1: tracking technology was absolutely necessary for a R to develop
Speaker 1: the way it did. GPS technology as well. Remember it
Speaker 1: wasn't that long ago that we ordinary mere mortals didn't
Speaker 1: have access to really accurate GPS information. For a very
Speaker 1: long time that was purposely made less accurate. It was
Speaker 1: a matter of national defense. It wasn't until the nineties
Speaker 1: that you started to ce GPS become more accurate for
Speaker 1: the basic consumer. Wait, back in the day, you might
Speaker 1: get accuracy of up to around a hundred meters, which
Speaker 1: is not great if you're looking for the next place
Speaker 1: to make your turn. If it's a hundred meters away,
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty far. But now it's within a few feet,
Speaker 1: so it's much better. That sort of stuff all had
Speaker 1: to come together in order for augmented reality to become
Speaker 1: a viable I almost said a reality, but that just
Speaker 1: starts to sound redundant at any rate. Let's talk about
Speaker 1: some of these technologies we were. We really need things
Speaker 1: like gyroscopes, accelerometers. These help devices understand their orientation where
Speaker 1: they are in respect to something else, like are they
Speaker 1: For a smartphone, it might be is it in landscape
Speaker 1: mode or portrait mode? But for a head mounted display,
Speaker 1: it would help give the the unit the information it
Speaker 1: needs to know which way you're looking, like are you
Speaker 1: looking to the east or to the west. That kind
Speaker 1: of thing. UH also compasses obviously very important GPS sensors,
Speaker 1: image recognition software, but has become really important so that
Speaker 1: when you are looking at something UH, the system can
Speaker 1: actually identify what that is. In some cases you can
Speaker 1: get around this. You can design an a R system
Speaker 1: where let's say you make a movie poster and the
Speaker 1: a R application has the movie poster animate in some
Speaker 1: way if you hold up a smartphone that's running the
Speaker 1: appropriate app. So I'm just gonna take a movie from
Speaker 1: my past that does not have an a R movie
Speaker 1: poster associated with it, but one that I can talk
Speaker 1: about as if it were a good example, and that
Speaker 1: has to be Big Trouble in Little China, universally cleared
Speaker 1: the best movie that has ever been made. So you've
Speaker 1: got your Big Trouble and Little China poster up on
Speaker 1: the wall, and you hold up your smartphone and you
Speaker 1: activate your Big Trouble and Little China movie marketing app,
Speaker 1: and the camera on your phone detect the poster. It's
Speaker 1: you know, the posters there. Well. The app and the
Speaker 1: poster together are able to construct the augmented experience because
Speaker 1: there have been elements put into the poster that the
Speaker 1: app is looking for. And once the app identifies that, like,
Speaker 1: it sees maybe eight different points on the poster, and
Speaker 1: because of the orientation of those points, it knows what
Speaker 1: angle it's at, what height it's at in relation to
Speaker 1: the phone, and can give you on your display the
Speaker 1: augmented reality experience. In this case, it's obviously Jack Burton
Speaker 1: and the Pork Chop Express eating a sandwich, because, as
Speaker 1: we know, the most riveting scene in the movie unfolds
Speaker 1: in this way. So that would be kind of an
Speaker 1: augmented reality experience where you didn't have to worry about
Speaker 1: every possible application out in the real world. You made
Speaker 1: it for something very specific, which means in your software
Speaker 1: you can have the camera look quote unquote for these
Speaker 1: particular points of reference and thus create the augmented experience
Speaker 1: in that way. If you want to take that and
Speaker 1: move it to the real world where you can see
Speaker 1: augmented information about just the world around you, it becomes
Speaker 1: way more complicated. You have to have very sophisticated image
Speaker 1: recognition software so that the camera picks up the images,
Speaker 1: the software processes the information, identifies what those images are,
Speaker 1: and gives you the relevant information. So working with all
Speaker 1: the sensors, augmented reality can make this a possibility. So
Speaker 1: another example, let's say you're out on the street in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: You're here in my hometown, Atlanta, Georgia, and you're looking
Speaker 1: at a building and you wonder what it is, and
Speaker 1: you hold up your phone and you've got your little
Speaker 1: map app that allows you to look at a real
Speaker 1: world setting and tells you information about it, and it
Speaker 1: tells you it's the Georgia Aquarium. Well, first of all,
Speaker 1: you would probably know that already because the signage there
Speaker 1: is actually pretty good. But the point being that this
Speaker 1: would be uh something that would tap into the GPS
Speaker 1: coordinates on your phone, so it would know where your
Speaker 1: location was and help narrow that down. The compass would
Speaker 1: tell it what direction you are facing the camera angle. Also,
Speaker 1: when you have some image recognition going on there, the
Speaker 1: accelerometer tells the orientation of the phone itself. All of
Speaker 1: this data together would give the software the information needed
Speaker 1: for it to display the label Georgia Aquarium on your phone.
Speaker 1: And it all happens in an instant that's pretty amazing.
Speaker 1: Typically you also have to have some other method to
Speaker 1: communicate with a larger infrastructure, because we don't have the
Speaker 1: capability of building an enormous, sleep powerful computer that has
Speaker 1: all this real world information programmed into it and make
Speaker 1: it a handheld or wearable device. So usually you have
Speaker 1: to pair these devices with some other larger infrastructure. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's a double handshake. For example, with Google Glass, you
Speaker 1: would use Bluetooth to connect Google Glass to a smartphone.
Speaker 1: Then the smartphone would have the connection to the larger
Speaker 1: internet through your smartphones UH cell service provider. So while
Speaker 1: you're experiencing the augmented reality through the Google Glass, it's
Speaker 1: actually communicating through your phone to the infrastructure to get
Speaker 1: the data it needs to show you the information. It's
Speaker 1: showing you very important elements. And all of these components,
Speaker 1: like I said, came together more or less around the
Speaker 1: same time. Most of them were being developed independently of
Speaker 1: each other, and it's just that now we're seeing them
Speaker 1: all converge. That's an old favorite word here at tech
Speaker 1: stuff converge together to create the augmented reality experience and
Speaker 1: make it possible. So how did we get here? How
Speaker 1: did these different elements develop? Well, there are a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of technology pioneers who really created the foundation for
Speaker 1: augmented reality as well as virtual reality and mixed reality.
Speaker 1: But one that I think we really need to concentrate
Speaker 1: on at first is Ivan Sutherland. Now. Sutherland was born
Speaker 1: in Hastings, Nebraska in nineteen thirty eight, and as a
Speaker 1: kid he was fascinated with mathematics, particularly geometry, and also
Speaker 1: with engineering. He began to study and experiment with computers
Speaker 1: while he was in school, and this was at a
Speaker 1: time where personal computers weren't a thing. There were no
Speaker 1: personal computers at this point. Computers were actually pretty rare
Speaker 1: and they were huge, and in fact, they often would
Speaker 1: rely upon physical media formats like punch punch cards or
Speaker 1: paper tape to read a program. So you didn't even
Speaker 1: have a disk or like certainly nothing like a US
Speaker 1: Beat thumb drive or anything like that. You you actually
Speaker 1: had to put physical media into the machine for it
Speaker 1: to read and then execute whatever program you had designed
Speaker 1: for that device. He went to college at what is
Speaker 1: now Carnegie Mellon University on a full scholarship. He graduated
Speaker 1: with a Bachelor of Science degree. He would then go
Speaker 1: on to earn a master's degree at cal Tech and
Speaker 1: a PhD in electrical engineering from m I T. And
Speaker 1: actually his doctoral thesis supervisor was Claude Shannon, And we
Speaker 1: talked about Claude Shannon back in the two thousand and
Speaker 1: fourteen episode who is Claude Shannon? Um. We recorded that
Speaker 1: not too long after Shannon's passing. So if you want
Speaker 1: to hear a really interesting story about a pioneer in
Speaker 1: computer science, you should go check out that two thousand
Speaker 1: and fourteen episode. Back to Sutherland. For his thesis, he
Speaker 1: created something called sketch Pad and that was really, by
Speaker 1: most accounts, the first computer graphical user interface or gooey.
Speaker 1: A graphic goal user interface means that you interact with
Speaker 1: the computer through graphics representing various commands on the computer.
Speaker 1: Windows and the Mac operating system are both examples of
Speaker 1: graphical user interfaces, as is the interface on your smartphone.
Speaker 1: If you have a smartphone where you choose applications on
Speaker 1: a screen, that's a graphical user interface. Well, Sutherland created
Speaker 1: what is largely considered to be the first one of those.
Speaker 1: After college, he entered military service and he was assigned
Speaker 1: to the National Security Agency. We have great friends there.
Speaker 1: I assume I'm sure they're listening, because they're listening to
Speaker 1: everything at any rate. He entered the n s A
Speaker 1: as an electrical engineer, and in nineteen sixty four he
Speaker 1: replaced J. C. R. Lick Lighter as the head of
Speaker 1: DARPA's Information Processing Techniques Office, or TIPTOE. And also, by
Speaker 1: back then, DARPA wasn't DARPA, it was just ARPA. Uh uh,
Speaker 1: So this is the same group, by the way, that
Speaker 1: would end up doing a lot of work that would
Speaker 1: form the Arpanette a few years later, and the Arpanette
Speaker 1: was the predecessor to the Internet in some ways. At least,
Speaker 1: the Arpanet was what ended up being the the building
Speaker 1: blocks for the infrastructure that would become the Internet. Now,
Speaker 1: all of that work happened after Sutherland had already departed
Speaker 1: the organization. His work became a fundamental component of both
Speaker 1: virtual and augmented reality. As I mentioned earlier, in nine
Speaker 1: he wrote a piece and essay. It's very short, it's
Speaker 1: very easy read, and you can find it online. The
Speaker 1: title of the essay is the Ultimate Display. And if
Speaker 1: you ever do any research in virtual reality or augmented reality,
Speaker 1: this essay is going to pop up in your research,
Speaker 1: so go ahead and read it. It's like two pages long,
Speaker 1: so it goes very quickly. In that essay he talked
Speaker 1: about several ideas, including the idealized display, the ultimate display,
Speaker 1: something that would be the the furthest you could go
Speaker 1: with display technology. Now, keep in mind, in his time,
Speaker 1: by his time he's still alive, by the way, but
Speaker 1: this time in the nineties sixties, he uh, you know,
Speaker 1: things were just restricted to monitors. You might have a
Speaker 1: light pen, but usually you just use a keyboard. Like
Speaker 1: it was pretty bare bones. They said, let's push this
Speaker 1: as far as we can imagine it. And in his example,
Speaker 1: he thought of a room that would be completely controlled
Speaker 1: by computers. Everything you would experience within that room would
Speaker 1: be generated by a computer. Everything you see here, smell, taste,
Speaker 1: and touch, all of it generated by computers. The computer
Speaker 1: would even be able to form physical objects out of
Speaker 1: pure matter itself. Now, he wasn't suggesting that this would
Speaker 1: ever be a device that we would actually be able
Speaker 1: to build. He was just saying, what is the ultimate
Speaker 1: incarnation of display technology? And if you read it, you realize, oh,
Speaker 1: this is where the Star Trek Next Generation writers got
Speaker 1: their idea for the Holidack. But unlike Star Trek the
Speaker 1: Next Generation, the Ultimate Display would not go on the
Speaker 1: Fritz every other episode and try to kill the crew.
Speaker 1: It was better than that. The Ultimate Display was sort
Speaker 1: of a a foundational like Philosophically, it was foundational for
Speaker 1: virtual reality and augmented reality. This idea of a very
Speaker 1: immersive experience where you, as a user, are surrounded somehow
Speaker 1: by this computer generated experience. And that's true both with
Speaker 1: augmented reality and virtual reality. And augmented reality, the real
Speaker 1: world is still there, but you get this enhanced experience
Speaker 1: that is completely computer generated. So in nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 1: Sutherland and a student named Danny Cohen would create a VR,
Speaker 1: a r head mounted display or h MD, and they
Speaker 1: nicknamed it the Sword of Damocles. Why because you had
Speaker 1: to suspend it from the ceiling. It was too heavy
Speaker 1: to wear on your head. You needed it to be
Speaker 1: nice and sturdy. Uh. It included transparent lenses, which meant
Speaker 1: you could overlay computer information on the lenses themselves, and
Speaker 1: thus you could look through the lenses at the real
Speaker 1: world and have these wire framed graphics on top of
Speaker 1: what you were looking at. And it also had a
Speaker 1: magnetic tracking system, meaning that it had sensors that could
Speaker 1: detect magnetic fields, and as you turned your head or
Speaker 1: you change the inclination of your head, it would change
Speaker 1: the magnetic field and this would be relayed as a
Speaker 1: command to the visual center the actual lenses themselves, so
Speaker 1: that it would the change would be reflected in what
Speaker 1: you saw. So if you have a virtual environment and
Speaker 1: you turn your head to the left, you want the
Speaker 1: view within the virtual environment to go to the left too,
Speaker 1: but without head tracking technology that's impossible. So this was
Speaker 1: a very early example of head tracking technology. And again
Speaker 1: it used magnets magnetic fields in order to do that. Uh.
Speaker 1: Obviously it's also really important for augmented reality. Again, if
Speaker 1: the a R system doesn't detect that you are looking around,
Speaker 1: then you're not getting relevant information, not for the specific
Speaker 1: thing you are looking at. Anyway, as I said, the
Speaker 1: graphics were pretty primitive. There were wire frame drawings, but
Speaker 1: they still showed that this was a viable approach to
Speaker 1: technology using HMD for augmented or virtual reality use. Oh
Speaker 1: and one other note I should make so a lot
Speaker 1: of people say the sort of Damocles was the first
Speaker 1: head mounted display, and they say, you know, this is
Speaker 1: the first m D was made in nineteen I take
Speaker 1: issue with that. I don't think of the sort of
Speaker 1: Damocles as the first head mounted display. That to me
Speaker 1: should go to a different invention called the head site
Speaker 1: h G A D S I G h T now
Speaker 1: that was developed by Philco and unlike the sort of Damocles,
Speaker 1: it didn't create a virtual world. Instead, the head site
Speaker 1: was sort of a remote viewfinder for a video camera.
Speaker 1: So imagine that you've got a camera mounted on a
Speaker 1: mechanical uh swiveling mount, so you can move it left right,
Speaker 1: you can change the orientation the inclination as well, and
Speaker 1: then you have that mapped to a head mounted display,
Speaker 1: so that if I put the display on and I
Speaker 1: looked to the left, the camera pans to the left.
Speaker 1: If I look to the right, it pans to the right.
Speaker 1: That sort of thing it was meant to be away
Speaker 1: for for people to operate a camera in a remote
Speaker 1: location that might not be very friendly to a human
Speaker 1: being standing there. For example, the exterior of an aircraft.
Speaker 1: You could have a camera mounted on the outside of
Speaker 1: your aircraft that would allow an engineer on the inside
Speaker 1: to look around and maybe help a pilot land or
Speaker 1: navigate in a dangerous situation, or just get an idea
Speaker 1: of the status of the aircraft itself. This was very
Speaker 1: much a technology that was being pushed by the military,
Speaker 1: an idea to create more military uses using this technology
Speaker 1: to make the military more competent, more adept at very
Speaker 1: rapid changing situations on the technology front, So headsite preceded
Speaker 1: the sort of damocles by about seven years. That came
Speaker 1: out around nineteen sixty one, but again it wasn't a
Speaker 1: virtual reality headset or an augmented reality headset. Was kind
Speaker 1: of a like I said, a remote viewfinder. But still
Speaker 1: I consider that to be the earliest head mounted display,
Speaker 1: not the sort of damocles. However, Sutherland would end up
Speaker 1: going on to make lots of other contributions in computer
Speaker 1: graphics as well as the overall concepts that would guide
Speaker 1: both virtual reality and augmented reality development over the next
Speaker 1: several decades. But now it'll be time for me to
Speaker 1: kind of move away from Sutherland to talk about some
Speaker 1: other developments that were important in a R. And before
Speaker 1: I get to that, let's take a quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. All Right, we just left off with
Speaker 1: Ivan Sutherland. Now let's talk about a different father of
Speaker 1: augmented reality, Myron Krueger or Dr Myron Krueger. In nineteen four,
Speaker 1: Dr Krueger create an augmented reality lab called Video Place. Uh.
Speaker 1: He was really into this idea of seeing the interaction
Speaker 1: of technology and people in artistic ways. He really wanted
Speaker 1: to explore artistic expressions using technology and people working together.
Speaker 1: So he wanted to create an artificial reality environment that
Speaker 1: didn't require the user to wear special equipment. You wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to put on a head mold display, or wear
Speaker 1: special gloves, or use any kind of device to control
Speaker 1: your actions, because that's a barrier between you and the experience. Instead,
Speaker 1: his version consisted of a laboratory that had several rooms
Speaker 1: all network together, and each room had a video camera
Speaker 1: in it and a projector and a screen. Now, the
Speaker 1: video camera would pick up the motions of the person
Speaker 1: inside the room. It would send information to the projector,
Speaker 1: which would then project the person's silhouette on the screen.
Speaker 1: And the silhouette was typically a really bright color, and
Speaker 1: you could move around and your silhouette would move around,
Speaker 1: So you almost became like a puppet master controlling your
Speaker 1: own silhouette. But then he started to incorporate other things,
Speaker 1: like other elements that were virtually on the screen. The
Speaker 1: projector was projecting things that were on the screen but
Speaker 1: not in the actual real room itself. So imagine a
Speaker 1: ball and a ball is being projected on the screen. Well,
Speaker 1: you could move around so that your silhouette would interact
Speaker 1: with the ball and the ball would bounce away. That
Speaker 1: sort of thing, so you would be able to interact
Speaker 1: with virtual environments by moving around in a real physical space.
Speaker 1: And while those objects weren't really there in front of you,
Speaker 1: you could see the representation of them on the screen.
Speaker 1: And this was really powerful stuff. And remember I said
Speaker 1: these rooms were all network together, so you could actually
Speaker 1: have a system where a person in one room and
Speaker 1: a person in another room both have their silhouettes projected
Speaker 1: together in their respective rooms on the screen, and your
Speaker 1: silhouette would be one color, the other person's silhouette would
Speaker 1: be a different color, and you could interact with one another.
Speaker 1: And according to reports from this art experiment, they noticed
Speaker 1: that whenever people would have their silhouettes cross one another,
Speaker 1: they would actually recoil in their physical rooms. Keep in
Speaker 1: mind they're in different rooms, they're not in the same
Speaker 1: one together, they would recoil as if they had made
Speaker 1: physical contact or bumped into someone. So it showed that
Speaker 1: there was a very powerful psychological element to this virtual presence.
Speaker 1: And again that psychological element plays a huge important role
Speaker 1: in VR and a R research and development, not just
Speaker 1: for creating products, but just to understand how we process
Speaker 1: information and incorporated into our sense of reality. Not to
Speaker 1: get too deep, for you guys. So experimentation in the
Speaker 1: field continued over the years. In the early nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: Dr Krueger would write a book and publish it about
Speaker 1: artificial realities. But while the principles for augmented reality were established,
Speaker 1: the technologies were still rather unwieldy. They were large, they
Speaker 1: weren't reliable, and it would require several years of work
Speaker 1: to improve those technologies, to create miniaturization strategies to get
Speaker 1: the elements down to a size that was more practical
Speaker 1: for that sort of use and wouldn't require you to
Speaker 1: have a head mound display mounted to the ceiling. And
Speaker 1: all of that took time, but you could tell that
Speaker 1: the ideas underlying augmented and virtual reality were already in place.
Speaker 1: In n there was a Boeing researcher named Tom Coddell
Speaker 1: who coined the term augmented reality, and he was specifically
Speaker 1: using it to talk about this approach to overlaying digital
Speaker 1: information on top of our physical world to enhance it
Speaker 1: in some way. Now. Dr Cordell earned a PhD in
Speaker 1: physics and astronomy from the University of Arizona, and before
Speaker 1: contributing the term augmented reality to the public lexicon. He
Speaker 1: did extensive work and artificial intelligence research and development. He
Speaker 1: also became a professor in the fields of electrical and
Speaker 1: computer engineering at the University of New Mexico. So when
Speaker 1: he was working with Boeing, he used this phrase to
Speaker 1: talk about specific system he was working on, an augmented
Speaker 1: reality system, and the whole purpose of this was to
Speaker 1: help people who were helping construct airplanes lay cables properly.
Speaker 1: The whole idea was to use this system so that uh,
Speaker 1: an electrician can see exactly where the cable needed to
Speaker 1: go inside the partly constructed cabin of an aircraft, and
Speaker 1: that way you could follow the directions that you see
Speaker 1: through your display, lay the actual cable down where the
Speaker 1: guide tells you to go, and then you would have
Speaker 1: a properly wired airplane. Uh. And I'm sure, as we're
Speaker 1: all aware, properly wired airplanes are good airplanes. Improperly wired
Speaker 1: airplanes are not so good. So it was a very
Speaker 1: important system to make this much more smooth and fast,
Speaker 1: and it meant that you didn't have to have as
Speaker 1: as many experts to guide the process. You could actually
Speaker 1: have someone come in who had never done this before
Speaker 1: and just follow the directions through this augmented reality set
Speaker 1: system and they could wire the airplane properly, so really
Speaker 1: clever means of using augmented reality. Also, we would end
Speaker 1: up seeing that same sort of philosophy used again and
Speaker 1: again in the future in more sophisticated UH types of technology.
Speaker 1: It was the exact same approach, exact same idea underlying it.
Speaker 1: In Lewis Rosenberg proposed a system that the Air Force
Speaker 1: could use to allow someone to control devices from a
Speaker 1: remote location, and that consisted of a video camera which
Speaker 1: would provide the visual data to the user through a
Speaker 1: head mounted display. They would wear the display on their
Speaker 1: heads or they would look at a screen, but typically
Speaker 1: they'd wear a display, and then they would also wear
Speaker 1: an exoskeleton on their upper body that would allow them
Speaker 1: to control some sort of robotic device, typically robotic arms.
Speaker 1: And usually the way this would work is that the
Speaker 1: display was designed in such a way with a video
Speaker 1: camera so that the view that the person had it
Speaker 1: made it look like the robot arms were their actual arms,
Speaker 1: which required a little bit of trickery on the part
Speaker 1: of Rosenberg. They had to fudge the distances between the
Speaker 1: video camera and the robotic arms to give this this
Speaker 1: sort of feeling that the robot arms represented your actual arms.
Speaker 1: So you move your arms inside the exoskeleton, and the
Speaker 1: robot arms would move as well at the remote location,
Speaker 1: so you it's kind of like a really fancy remote control.
Speaker 1: Now imagine that the robot arms are holding various tools. Uh.
Speaker 1: The suit would also provide haptic feedback, that touch based
Speaker 1: feedback to let a user know more about what is
Speaker 1: going on when they're operating the arms. So if you
Speaker 1: were to have do something that would make a robot
Speaker 1: arm encounter resistance, then you would feel haptic feedback in
Speaker 1: the suit that would indicate, oh, you're you're going beyond
Speaker 1: the parameters of where this robot arm is capable of going.
Speaker 1: So you learned very quickly where where you can operate
Speaker 1: within that suit and make sure that you are not
Speaker 1: pushing it beyond its limits. You could also uh end
Speaker 1: up using these tools to do various things in this
Speaker 1: remote environment. Now, Rosenberg called his system virtual fixtures, which
Speaker 1: meant that the user would see these virtual overlays on
Speaker 1: top of a real environment that they were looking at.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to give a very basic example that
Speaker 1: to illustrate this. Because it's hard to imagine, it's hard
Speaker 1: to get it across in words. But let's say you're
Speaker 1: looking through a headmund display and in front of you
Speaker 1: is a board, wooden board, and it's just a regular
Speaker 1: wooden board. There's nothing painted on it or anything in
Speaker 1: the real world, and it's in a room that's across
Speaker 1: the building from you. You cannot see this with your
Speaker 1: own eyes. You can only see it through the video camera.
Speaker 1: The virtual fixture overlay might be a series of circles,
Speaker 1: and the circles are things that you were meant to
Speaker 1: cut out of the board using the robot arms and
Speaker 1: a tool that's right there inside the physical environment across
Speaker 1: the building from you. So you follow the patterns that
Speaker 1: you in this virtual overlay and you complete the task.
Speaker 1: That's a very simple example. And uh, this system was
Speaker 1: meant to allow for that. That's what he would call
Speaker 1: the virtual fixtures, these overlays that you would see that
Speaker 1: would appear to be real, but actually we're not present
Speaker 1: in the physical environment itself. Now. Also in a group
Speaker 1: of researchers at Columbia University were proposing a system that
Speaker 1: they called the knowledge based Augmented Reality for maintenance assistance
Speaker 1: a k a. Karma cute. Their approach was pretty novel.
Speaker 1: They pointed out that while augmented reality had tremendous potential,
Speaker 1: it also had a really big barrier, and that it
Speaker 1: takes an enormous amount of time to design or animate
Speaker 1: and implement these graphic overlays for a our applications. So
Speaker 1: let's say you're in a room and you're looking at
Speaker 1: different objects, and little labels are popping up for each object.
Speaker 1: If you're having to do all that by hand, it
Speaker 1: takes a huge amount of time. What they wanted to
Speaker 1: do was create artificial intelligence systems, or at least techniques
Speaker 1: to generate graphics automatically on the fly. So this would
Speaker 1: be similar to using image recognition software, so that if
Speaker 1: you look at a specific box, let's say, the image
Speaker 1: recognition software might be able to map that box to
Speaker 1: a specific product and thus give you an overlay of
Speaker 1: information about the product that would be inside that box.
Speaker 1: And it would be able to do all this automatically.
Speaker 1: It would not require a human programmer to go through
Speaker 1: and and look at every single product in every single
Speaker 1: type of box and program all that out. That would
Speaker 1: be ridiculous. It would take forever so it was the
Speaker 1: work of this group with Karma that really started the
Speaker 1: ball rolling with this AI approach to automatically fill in
Speaker 1: that information and make a are a more practical experience.
Speaker 1: Around this same time, between ninety two and nine, the
Speaker 1: Laurel Western Development Labs, which was defense contractor, began to
Speaker 1: work with the U. S Military to create a R
Speaker 1: systems for military vehicles. And you can understand very quickly
Speaker 1: how a R would have enormous potential for military applications.
Speaker 1: And in fact, a R is very commonly used in
Speaker 1: lots of different things, like pilot helmets, where it helps
Speaker 1: pilots keep track of targets uh and identify potential threats,
Speaker 1: that kind of thing. But in this case, they were
Speaker 1: really looking at creating a augmented reality system that would
Speaker 1: create virtual opponents for people working in simulated wartime conditions,
Speaker 1: so really a training program. Imagine that you're operating an
Speaker 1: actual military vehicle like a tank, and you have a
Speaker 1: view outside that is really an augmented reality system, so
Speaker 1: you're actually looking at the real world around you. You
Speaker 1: aren't just sitting in a simulator inside of building. You
Speaker 1: are out there in the field controlling a real vehicle
Speaker 1: moving around in real terrain, but you also see virtual
Speaker 1: representations of enemies in that real terrain, and you can
Speaker 1: practice maneuvers and firing on enemies that sort of thing,
Speaker 1: probably not using live ammunition at that point, but having
Speaker 1: a more realistic simulation in a real environment, so that
Speaker 1: you're not just trying to create a totally virtual scenario. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that work was done in the world wouldn't really learn
Speaker 1: about it at large until about ninety nine, because that's
Speaker 1: the way the military works. They're not so eager to
Speaker 1: talk about their stuff while are still doing it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: at the same time, artists were continuing to explore the
Speaker 1: relationships between physical performers and virtual elements. You remember I
Speaker 1: talked about Dr Krueger earlier. While in different artist Julie
Speaker 1: Martin would create a piece called Dancing in Cyberspace, and
Speaker 1: in that piece, dancers on a physical space or a
Speaker 1: physical stage. We're able to manipulate virtual objects, so an
Speaker 1: audience would be able to see both the physical performance
Speaker 1: by the dancers and the virtual reactions the things that
Speaker 1: happened within the virtual environment as a result of the
Speaker 1: dancers moving around their physical space. Pretty neat two researchers
Speaker 1: Reki Moto and Nagao created there the first real handheld
Speaker 1: a R display, but it was a tethered display. It
Speaker 1: wasn't free form. You couldn't just take it anywhere. It
Speaker 1: was called Navy Cam, and you had to have a
Speaker 1: tether like cable essentially connect the Navy Cam to a workstation.
Speaker 1: But it had a forward facing camera and you can
Speaker 1: use a video feed to go through this handheld device
Speaker 1: through the cable to the workstation, and it could detect
Speaker 1: color coded markers in the camera image and display information
Speaker 1: on a video see through view. So you can get
Speaker 1: that augmented reality experience. Obviously very limited, you know, you
Speaker 1: could not just carry this around with you everywhere you go,
Speaker 1: but it showed the ideas behind augmented reality could in
Speaker 1: fact be realized in a handheld format. Now. It was
Speaker 1: just a matter of getting those different components small enough
Speaker 1: to all fit in a self contained mobile form factor.
Speaker 1: In the late nineties, we started seeing televised sporting events
Speaker 1: featuring augmented reality elements, or at least you did. I
Speaker 1: don't watch sports ball, that's not entirely true, but I
Speaker 1: don't watch football or hockey. American football or hockey, and
Speaker 1: both of those were the sports that really got them.
Speaker 1: First off, I'm gonna backtrack. I used to watch hockey,
Speaker 1: but then Winnipeg stole the Atlanta Thrashers from me. Winnipeg, Okay,
Speaker 1: getting back to hockey. So hockey had the Fox track system,
Speaker 1: which Fox put into hockey games so that you could
Speaker 1: easily follow the puck. Instead of trying to watch this
Speaker 1: little bitty black disc spinning around, you got to watch
Speaker 1: this very bright, highlighted neon colored disc that everyone hated.
Speaker 1: And after about two seasons, Fox stop doing it, and
Speaker 1: people were happy. Untila Thrashers moved away, and then it
Speaker 1: was just miserable. American football would follow suit in the
Speaker 1: late nineties and have the first down line introduced, where
Speaker 1: they could on live video overlay the first down line.
Speaker 1: Usually it's a bright yellow line that indicates how far
Speaker 1: the offensive team needs to go. And by offensive, I
Speaker 1: mean they're on the offensive. I don't mean they offend
Speaker 1: my sensibilities. I'm not that against American football, but it
Speaker 1: showed how far they would need to go in order
Speaker 1: to establish a first down, which I am told is
Speaker 1: something you want to do. Uh. That would start to
Speaker 1: get employed in and over time we would see that
Speaker 1: increase where eventually Skycam was able to even use this system.
Speaker 1: At first, it wasn't you could get a Skycamp you
Speaker 1: but you couldn't do the overlay of the first intent
Speaker 1: line until later. Well, I've got a lot more to
Speaker 1: say about augmented reality, but before I do, let's take
Speaker 1: another quick break to thank our sponsor. Okay, we're back.
Speaker 1: Let's skip ahead to I guess it's not really skipping
Speaker 1: I just talked about. Let's plot ahead to That's when
Speaker 1: NASA's X spacecraft was using an a R system as
Speaker 1: part of its navigational tools, so people back on Earth
Speaker 1: could look at a view from the spacecraft a camera
Speaker 1: mounted on the space ace craft, and on top of
Speaker 1: that view they could overlay map data to help with navigation.
Speaker 1: And all of that, of course was controlled back here
Speaker 1: on Earth, but it was sort of an experiment to
Speaker 1: see how augmented reality could be incorporated into space exploration
Speaker 1: missions in the future and make them more effective. Also,
Speaker 1: in the Navy began work on the Battlefield Augmented Reality
Speaker 1: System or BARS, which is a wearable a R system
Speaker 1: for soldiers. You've probably seen various implementations of this over
Speaker 1: the years is obviously evolved since nine It's one of
Speaker 1: those pieces of technology that some soldiers took to but
Speaker 1: a lot just felt that it created unnecessary distractions. Technology
Speaker 1: and warfare is very, very difficult because there's sometimes where
Speaker 1: we think, oh, more information is always better, but in
Speaker 1: some cases that doesn't seem to hold true. Uh, And
Speaker 1: for some people with these head mounted displays or or
Speaker 1: really it's heads up displays HUDs uh, that can sometimes
Speaker 1: be the case, depends on the implementation. In two thousand,
Speaker 1: hiro Katsu Kato created a software library called a R Toolkit.
Speaker 1: Very important software library was also open source, so anyone
Speaker 1: could contribute to it, modify it. Brent put out a
Speaker 1: new version that sort of stuff, and it uses video
Speaker 1: tracking to overlay computer graphics on a video camera feed,
Speaker 1: and it's still a component for a lot of a
Speaker 1: our experiences today. Later on in the two thousand's this
Speaker 1: would be adapted so that it could also be used
Speaker 1: in web experiences, not just native experiences to specific devices,
Speaker 1: and we continue to see are built into new experiences
Speaker 1: including smartphones and tablets. By two thousand four, some researchers
Speaker 1: in Germany, we're creating a r apps that can take
Speaker 1: advantage of a smartphones camera. But two thousand fours pretty
Speaker 1: early for smartphones. It really would would be a few
Speaker 1: years before this would truly take off, because that's when
Speaker 1: Apple came out with the iPhone in two thousand seven.
Speaker 1: That was the real revolution in smartphone technology. There had
Speaker 1: been smartphones before the iPhone, don't get me wrong, and
Speaker 1: many of them were really good, but the iPhone was
Speaker 1: something that caught the public's attention and made smartphone sexy.
Speaker 1: And because of that, there was a ton of money
Speaker 1: poured into the smartphone industry as well as not just Apple,
Speaker 1: but also to other companies, like the companies that were
Speaker 1: offering Android smartphones. But I think we can really thank
Speaker 1: Apple for all of that happening in the first place,
Speaker 1: especially things like seeing that accelerometer where you could switch
Speaker 1: from portrait to landscape mode. I remember everyone freaking out
Speaker 1: about that when Steve Jobs showed it off in two
Speaker 1: thousand seven at Macworld, and everyone thought, will this is
Speaker 1: the this is amazing. Well, we take it for granted now,
Speaker 1: but it was a big deal then. So once that
Speaker 1: smartphone revolution happened, it was a landslide victory for both
Speaker 1: augmented reality and virtual reality research and development, because it
Speaker 1: meant that so much money was being poured into creating newer, thinner,
Speaker 1: more capable smartphones that we saw an explosion in technological
Speaker 1: development that could also be used for virtual and augmented
Speaker 1: reality experiences. So, for example, I think of those sensors
Speaker 1: I talked about earlier, accelerometers and gyroscopes, that sort of thing. Well,
Speaker 1: we saw a lot of development in those spaces in
Speaker 1: order to make smartphones better, and people who are working
Speaker 1: in a R and VR experiences can take advantage of
Speaker 1: those same sensors either creating apps specifically for smartphones. Thus,
Speaker 1: you don't have to build any other hardware, you just
Speaker 1: use existing hardware. But that limits how you can use it,
Speaker 1: right because you don't typically wear your smartphone directly in
Speaker 1: front of your face. Or they could end up taking
Speaker 1: advantage of those new, smaller sensors and incorporate them directly
Speaker 1: into brand new hardware like various types of wearables like
Speaker 1: Google Glass for example, but that would be a few
Speaker 1: more years. In two thousand and eleven, Nintendo launched the
Speaker 1: Nintendo three D S, which included a camera. It was
Speaker 1: you know, the three D capable handheld device and included
Speaker 1: actually a pair of forward facing cameras so you could
Speaker 1: take three D photos if you wanted to, and it
Speaker 1: also had some a R software included with it. You
Speaker 1: would get these special Nintendo cards kind of like playing cards,
Speaker 1: and if you were to point the camera of the
Speaker 1: three D S at the card and look at the screen,
Speaker 1: you would see a little virtual three dimensional character pop
Speaker 1: up on the card. So Mario would be an obvious example.
Speaker 1: You put the Mario card down on the table, you
Speaker 1: hold up the three D S, and you aim the
Speaker 1: camera at the card, and you look at the screen
Speaker 1: and there's Mario, and Mario appears to be jumping around
Speaker 1: on your physical table. Now, obviously, if you look off
Speaker 1: of the display, there's no Mario jumping around, but on
Speaker 1: the display there he is, and it was pretty cute.
Speaker 1: I remember being really impressed with this very simple implementation
Speaker 1: of a R when we got our three DS, and
Speaker 1: then I took our three DS apart, and then I
Speaker 1: took pictures of it, and then I posted on Twitter
Speaker 1: and people got sad, it's a great day. In two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen, Google introduced Google Glass that was the wearable
Speaker 1: that included a small display position just above the right eye. Uh,
Speaker 1: So when you look straightforward, you could tell that there
Speaker 1: was something kind of above your natural eyeline. But it
Speaker 1: get in the way too much. You too to look
Speaker 1: at the screen. You actually had a glimpse, You had
Speaker 1: a glance upward, and then you could see what was
Speaker 1: on the display. Google Glass had augmented reality features like crazy.
Speaker 1: You could see video calls. You could actually use the
Speaker 1: glasses to not just to take a video call, but
Speaker 1: show the other person what you are looking at so
Speaker 1: they could see from your point of view. You could
Speaker 1: also overlay directions, so if you're walking down street, you
Speaker 1: could glance up at the screen and it would tell
Speaker 1: you if you need to keep going straight or turn laughter,
Speaker 1: turn right, that kind of thing. It was really useful. Um.
Speaker 1: I had a pair of these Google Glass and I
Speaker 1: really liked the direction they were going in. I felt
Speaker 1: that it wasn't a fully realized product at the time,
Speaker 1: and eventually Google agreed and after a couple of years
Speaker 1: they took Google Glass off the market entirely, and now
Speaker 1: you can't get them anymore. Uh. They were clever, but
Speaker 1: they were expensive and they had some limitations, and like
Speaker 1: I was saying earlier, you know, it's hard to build
Speaker 1: all the components you need into one headset. So Google
Speaker 1: Glass would communicate via Bluetooth to your smartphone, and your
Speaker 1: smartphone would act as the actual nexus point to the Internet.
Speaker 1: But it was a neat idea, uh, and I enjoyed
Speaker 1: getting to use them while I did, so I keep
Speaker 1: hoping to see a return of that kind of technology,
Speaker 1: but perhaps in a more mature and less expensive format.
Speaker 1: Now we've also seen applications similar to the ones we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, the ones that are meant to guide people
Speaker 1: into laying out or repairing a system. We've seen that
Speaker 1: in the car world. Not too long ago, there was
Speaker 1: the MARTA system introduced by Volkswagen. MARTA makes me chuckle
Speaker 1: because that's also the name of Atlanta's public transportation system,
Speaker 1: But in this case, it stands for Mobile Augmented Reality
Speaker 1: Technical Assistance, and it's specifically designed for mechanics who are
Speaker 1: working on the XL one vehicle. So if you hold
Speaker 1: up an iPad that has this app on it, and
Speaker 1: the camera has pointed at an XL one and you
Speaker 1: look at the display, you'll see information overlaid on top
Speaker 1: of the car, including labels for all the different parts.
Speaker 1: So let's say you're a mechanic and you have to
Speaker 1: do a specific repair on this vehicle. You hold up
Speaker 1: the iPad, you look through the display, and you see
Speaker 1: exactly what you need to do. It gives you a
Speaker 1: set of instructions that shows you how you need to do.
Speaker 1: It tells you where you need to stand based upon
Speaker 1: the angle of the view. So if you hold it
Speaker 1: up and it says no, you need to move about
Speaker 1: a foot to the right, you can do that. Then
Speaker 1: hold up the iPad again. I'll say, all right, you're
Speaker 1: in the right spot. Make sure you loosen this particular
Speaker 1: bolt first, that kind of thing. And it's meant to
Speaker 1: be an interactive maintenance guide in a way maintenance and
Speaker 1: repair guide. This is one of those applications of augmentary
Speaker 1: lity I think is a no brainer to me. It's
Speaker 1: a killer hap the idea of having an ability to
Speaker 1: work with something you are not familiar with, but you're
Speaker 1: able to leverage the expertise of people who either designed
Speaker 1: it or built it, or just fully understand it and
Speaker 1: get guidance based on their expertise in real time, so
Speaker 1: you're not having to go and consult a an article
Speaker 1: about it, or watch a YouTube video. You get step
Speaker 1: by step instructions overlaid on top of your view of
Speaker 1: that thing. To me, that's the most compelling use of
Speaker 1: augmented reality from a practical standpoint. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of other uses that they'll talk about towards the end
Speaker 1: that I think are also really super cool. So don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, it's not the only one. But let's
Speaker 1: move on to two thousand fifteen. That was when Microsoft
Speaker 1: would unveil the hollow lens, something I still want to
Speaker 1: try out. I have not had a chance to try
Speaker 1: a hollow lens yet. That is a headset capable of
Speaker 1: advanced a R applications everything from what I was just
Speaker 1: talking about, giving you guidance, step by step instructions on
Speaker 1: how to do like a repair job on say an
Speaker 1: electrical outlet. You can even use a Skype system to
Speaker 1: call an expert who can then view your point of
Speaker 1: view and interact with that point of view. So let's
Speaker 1: say I'm looking at the outlet. The expert electrician I'm
Speaker 1: talking to can see what I see, and he or
Speaker 1: she can also make notes on the display which shows
Speaker 1: up in my field of view. So he or she
Speaker 1: might circle a specific wire and say you need to
Speaker 1: you need to remove that one first, and I know
Speaker 1: I need to do that one first because I can
Speaker 1: see which one they are talking about. Or they might
Speaker 1: circle another wire and say, no, matter what you do,
Speaker 1: don't cut this wire. Well, the toilet ups stairs will
Speaker 1: explode like lethal weapon too, and I won't do that
Speaker 1: because you know that guys like three days from retirement.
Speaker 1: So I have a heart. But no, this is this
Speaker 1: is a really neat idea, having this interactive ability to
Speaker 1: overlay the information from the world, the digital world, onto
Speaker 1: your physical world. And beyond that, the hollowns has lots
Speaker 1: of other functions. It's not just something to do, you know,
Speaker 1: home repairs around the house. You can also use it
Speaker 1: for entertainment purposes, like you could create a screen that
Speaker 1: can show you video from various sources and you can
Speaker 1: assign it a place on a wall in your environment.
Speaker 1: Let's say that you're in your living room and you
Speaker 1: just create a screen so you can watch Netflix, and
Speaker 1: you slap it on a wall and it will stay
Speaker 1: in that same position relative to your point of view.
Speaker 1: So if you look to the left or right, the
Speaker 1: screens days where you put it as if it were
Speaker 1: physically they're on your wall, but keep in mind it's
Speaker 1: just a virtual screen, and when you look back to
Speaker 1: that part of your wall, you'll see the virtual screen
Speaker 1: there playing whatever it was that you wanted to watch.
Speaker 1: I think that's a super cool idea. And they've also
Speaker 1: shown off games like a game of Minecraft that uses
Speaker 1: hollow lens so you can actually view a Minecraft world
Speaker 1: sitting appearing to sit at any rate on top of
Speaker 1: a table, so you can walk around the table and
Speaker 1: view the Minecraft world from various angles and play that way.
Speaker 1: I think that's super neat. Don't know how compelling it is,
Speaker 1: because again I haven't tried it myself, but I really
Speaker 1: like the idea. This year, two thousand and sixteen, are
Speaker 1: got another big boost from a little game called Pokemon Go.
Speaker 1: Although I have to admit this was a really primitive,
Speaker 1: basic implementation of augmented reality. Really, it was not much
Speaker 1: more than just a In fact, it was nothing more
Speaker 1: than just an animated overlay that would exist on top
Speaker 1: of the camera view of your of your device. So
Speaker 1: I'd say I'm holding up my smartphone and I'm trying
Speaker 1: to catch a Jiggli Puff, and the Jiggli Puff is
Speaker 1: currently bouncing up and down on the sidewalk in front
Speaker 1: of me. That's about as far as the augmented reality
Speaker 1: actual experience would go. So very primitive. But because Pokemon
Speaker 1: Go became so popular so quickly, it really pushed the
Speaker 1: concept of a R to the front of the minds
Speaker 1: of people everywhere, including business owners who immediately said, we
Speaker 1: need an augmented reality app Whether they actually needed one
Speaker 1: or not is beside the point. A lot of people
Speaker 1: got into a are because of Pokemon Go, uh, for
Speaker 1: both good and bad. I always think that you have
Speaker 1: to come up with the experience first. You have to
Speaker 1: understand why you need to use a specific strategy to
Speaker 1: create a specific experience, and then build it. Not hey,
Speaker 1: we need augmented reality makes something that's a R. To me,
Speaker 1: that's the backwards way of going about it. But what
Speaker 1: do I know. I'm not not a programmer, so I'm
Speaker 1: sure the programmers feel in a similar way to me.
Speaker 1: But that's just a guess. Now. The future of a
Speaker 1: R depends heavily upon the applications we see in which
Speaker 1: ones end up being successful and which ones aren't. Right now,
Speaker 1: I would say that the best bet is to see
Speaker 1: more a R features built into smartphones and tablets. Uh not,
Speaker 1: maybe not necessarily built into them, but have apps available
Speaker 1: that create a R experiences for very specific contexts. Like
Speaker 1: let's say it's a museum app. You might download a
Speaker 1: museum app on your phone, and when you go to
Speaker 1: the museum and you use your phone, you can get
Speaker 1: more information about the paintings and sculptures and other installations
Speaker 1: that you see in the museum. That's an easy one
Speaker 1: to understand. But that same app isn't going to be
Speaker 1: useful once you leave the museum, you no longer have
Speaker 1: the context that it is tied to. I think that
Speaker 1: smartphones are probably going to be where the greatest development
Speaker 1: is going to be in the near term, because wearables
Speaker 1: is still really hard to do. We still don't have
Speaker 1: a consumer version of the hollow lens out available for
Speaker 1: anyone to purchase, and it may never come out as
Speaker 1: a consumer product. Microsoft hasn't shown a whole lot of
Speaker 1: interest in making it a consumer product. Maybe that will change,
Speaker 1: but at the moment, I wouldn't hold my breath, so
Speaker 1: I would argue smartphones and tablets are pretty much where
Speaker 1: it's at maybe some implementation with some existing VR headsets
Speaker 1: which have external cameras mounted on them as well, like
Speaker 1: forward facing cameras. You could build a our experiences there.
Speaker 1: Then it gets a little weird because you're you're also
Speaker 1: you know, you're looking at a monitor, so you're looking
Speaker 1: at a video feed of your surroundings, and on top
Speaker 1: of the video feed, you get the overlay. Same thing
Speaker 1: is true for your smartphones and tablets, by the way,
Speaker 1: but different that from the Google glass implementation, where you're
Speaker 1: looking at the actual physical world, not a video representation
Speaker 1: of it, but the real world. And then because the
Speaker 1: display itself that you are looking through is transparent, you're
Speaker 1: looking at a transparent overlay of digital information that gives
Speaker 1: you more info about the world you are in. I
Speaker 1: think a R is super cool. I think it's really
Speaker 1: got a lot of potential to change the world around
Speaker 1: us and to change the way we interact with the
Speaker 1: world around us. You could imagine a dystopian future implementation
Speaker 1: of a R where we all have to wear glasses
Speaker 1: and we're constantly getting personalized commercials beamed at us whenever
Speaker 1: we look at anything, like imagine walking past a store
Speaker 1: casually looking in the window and then getting a whole
Speaker 1: bunch of ads for all the stuff that's in the
Speaker 1: store window. That would be obnoxious, and it's easy to
Speaker 1: understand how people would not want that, yet also easy
Speaker 1: to understand how that could possibly become a few her
Speaker 1: or think of the future where your privacy is no
Speaker 1: longer even relevant, and you walk down the street and
Speaker 1: you look at all the people's faces who are also
Speaker 1: walking down the street, and you're getting names of everybody
Speaker 1: and what they like and what they dislike. You know,
Speaker 1: what music they tend to listen to, maybe what they're
Speaker 1: listening to right now, And it's all because we've got
Speaker 1: facial recognition technology. Almost everyone has some sort of social
Speaker 1: media presence, so you can map that face to any
Speaker 1: public profiles, try and find a match. If you found
Speaker 1: a match, you can bring back information to the person
Speaker 1: wearing the glasses. So I can look at somebody and say, oh, this, uh,
Speaker 1: this cute kid over here, she's got she likes punk
Speaker 1: rock music. I'm gonna I'm gonna impress her with my
Speaker 1: knowledge of the cramps. That probably wouldn't work, but the
Speaker 1: point being that's pretty creepy and invasive, and so there
Speaker 1: are some negative implementations of a are that we have
Speaker 1: to watch out for unless we get to a point
Speaker 1: where we just don't care about privacy at all anymore.
Speaker 1: Some would argue we're already there, and in that case,
Speaker 1: this implementation of a R may not sound creepy at all.
Speaker 1: It might just sound kind of cool, kind of the
Speaker 1: equivalent of walking into a store seeing a person with
Speaker 1: a name tag and addressing them by name. If they
Speaker 1: don't remember they have a name tag on, they have
Speaker 1: this moment where they think, do I know you? That.
Speaker 1: If we're in a world where everyone can see everyone's
Speaker 1: name all the time, then well, for one thing, I
Speaker 1: won't ever have to worry about coming at a loss
Speaker 1: when I have to introduce my wife to someone. So
Speaker 1: that's a that's a plus side. Okay, I'm in favor
Speaker 1: of it now, all right. Well that kind of wraps
Speaker 1: up this deep dive on augmented reality. There's so many
Speaker 1: different other things I could have mentioned. There's so much
Speaker 1: more to the history and development of it and all
Speaker 1: the pieces of technology, But this is one of those
Speaker 1: strategies that arose because so many other elements had matured
Speaker 1: over a great deal of time. If you guys have
Speaker 1: any suggestions for future episodes tech Stuff, whether it's a
Speaker 1: specific kind of technology, or how technology has affected us,
Speaker 1: or how we affect tech. Maybe it's a specific company
Speaker 1: or person in technology, or you just have a suggestion
Speaker 1: for somebody I should have on the show, either as
Speaker 1: a guest co host or someone I should interview. Let
Speaker 1: me know, send me a message. The email to send
Speaker 1: it to is tech Stuff at how stuff works dot com,
Speaker 1: or drop me a line on social media. You can
Speaker 1: find me on Twitter or on Facebook with the handle
Speaker 1: tech stuff h s W and I'll talk to you
Speaker 1: guys again really soon. For more on this and thousands
Speaker 1: of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.