Speaker 1: Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with
Speaker 1: iHeart Radio and I love all things tech, and we're
Speaker 1: going to enjoy another classic episode of tech stuff in
Speaker 1: this episode. And uh, I promised new ones are right
Speaker 1: around the corner. I've got a cool one coming up
Speaker 1: in just a little while that you definitely want to
Speaker 1: check out. Very important, all about the dangers of browsing
Speaker 1: the Internet in an insecure way. But before we get
Speaker 1: to that, I thought maybe we could revisit this classic
Speaker 1: episode in which I talk about augmented reality. So this
Speaker 1: episode is titled Augmenting Your Reality, and it originally aired
Speaker 1: just a couple of years ago, and I thought it'd
Speaker 1: be fun to revisit it. So let's sit back and
Speaker 1: enjoy this classic episode. So I thought I would do
Speaker 1: a deeper dive, a bigger explanation about what augmented reality is,
Speaker 1: what it's all about, how it works, and sort of
Speaker 1: the applications we might put a r toward things that
Speaker 1: you know, was it good for tons of stuff? As
Speaker 1: it turns out, So the first thing we should do
Speaker 1: is probably defined some terms, because if you haven't really
Speaker 1: looked into augmented reality and you aren't familiar with a R,
Speaker 1: you might just be lost. I'm gonna define it all
Speaker 1: for you right now, because that's the kind of stand
Speaker 1: up guy I am. Technically speaking, augmented reality is using
Speaker 1: digital information to enhance or augment and experience in our
Speaker 1: physical real world. So the way we usually see this
Speaker 1: implemented involves some sort of display that has an image
Speaker 1: of the real world on it and it overlays digital
Speaker 1: information on top of that itch. So think of like
Speaker 1: a camera's viewfinder, like an LCD screen on a camera,
Speaker 1: and it actually labels the buildings that are in view.
Speaker 1: When you're out on the street and you hold the
Speaker 1: camera up or a smartphone or even a wearable device
Speaker 1: like a head mounted display that you can look through
Speaker 1: so you can see the real world, you're not just
Speaker 1: staring at a screen, or if you are staring at
Speaker 1: a screen, you're staring at a video feed that is
Speaker 1: provided by an external camera amounted just on the other
Speaker 1: side of the screen. So it's like you're looking through
Speaker 1: a display in the first place, but then on top
Speaker 1: of that view you have this digital information. That's the
Speaker 1: most common implementation we talked about, but it's not the
Speaker 1: only one. Augmented reality does not have to only be
Speaker 1: or even involve visual information at all. You could have
Speaker 1: audio only augmented reality, for example. But the whole idea
Speaker 1: is that it's something that's created digitally to enhance your
Speaker 1: experience in the real world. Now we can contrast this
Speaker 1: with the concept of virtual reality. Virtual reality, of course,
Speaker 1: is a term where you create an experience completely through
Speaker 1: computer generated means computer is making all the things you
Speaker 1: see and here, and maybe even beyond that if you
Speaker 1: have really sophisticated UH setups, so you might have some
Speaker 1: haptic feedback. Haptic refers to your sense of touch, So
Speaker 1: if you have haptic feedback, that means you're getting information
Speaker 1: feedback through your sense of touch. Common example of this
Speaker 1: is a rumble pack inside a game controller, where you
Speaker 1: know you fire a gun and a first person shooter
Speaker 1: and your controller rumbles as a result, letting you know
Speaker 1: that you are in fact, unleashing virtual destruction upon all
Speaker 1: you survey. Well, the same thing can be true with
Speaker 1: virtual reality set up. So virtual reality is all about
Speaker 1: constructing an artificial reality a simulated reality. Augmented reality is
Speaker 1: all about enhancing the one that we are actually in.
Speaker 1: And then there's also mixed reality. Mixed reality is kind
Speaker 1: of sort of in between the two. You might have
Speaker 1: some physical objects within a room that are also mapped
Speaker 1: to a virtual environment, and then you use something like
Speaker 1: a head molded display to enter the virtual environment. That's
Speaker 1: what looks like you're inside, but you have physical objects
Speaker 1: in the room around you that are also mapped to
Speaker 1: the virtual world, Meaning you could pick up this physical
Speaker 1: object and you would see that reflected within the virtual world,
Speaker 1: where you might pick up a sword and shield or
Speaker 1: move a chair or something along those lines. So augmented reality,
Speaker 1: virtual reality, and mixed reality are all kind of inter related,
Speaker 1: so much so that their histories also are very much
Speaker 1: inter related. And there's some people who try to elect
Speaker 1: these different technologies, these different approaches and put them under
Speaker 1: a common umbrella, and they tend to use the phrase
Speaker 1: alternate reality, which is unfortunate because that's also a r
Speaker 1: but alternate reality is kind of the umbrella for virtual,
Speaker 1: augmented and mixed reality. Uh that that that kind of
Speaker 1: gives you the definition of those basic terms, and it
Speaker 1: is important to understand them because they're becoming more and
Speaker 1: more important today. You are already probably aware of a
Speaker 1: lot of VR headsets that are out there on the
Speaker 1: market as well as VR uh Well, they're they're kind
Speaker 1: of like cases that you slide your smartphone into, so
Speaker 1: your smartphone becomes the actual display on a VR headset.
Speaker 1: The headset itself is more or less just a head
Speaker 1: mounted case for your phone. We've seen a lot of
Speaker 1: those come out over the last few years. We've also
Speaker 1: seen a lot of a R applications come out, typically
Speaker 1: for things iPads and smartphones, but we've also seen some
Speaker 1: hardware come out that for wearable devices that falls into
Speaker 1: the augmented reality category, stuff like Google Glass, which i'll
Speaker 1: talk about more a little bit later in this episode.
Speaker 1: For augmented reality to work, to get this enhanced experience
Speaker 1: of reality around you, there are a lot of technological
Speaker 1: components that have to come together so that you actually
Speaker 1: do get an experience that is meaningful. You know, you
Speaker 1: you have to have technology that quote unquote knows where
Speaker 1: you are and what you are looking at or what
Speaker 1: you are close to in order to get that augmented experience.
Speaker 1: It wouldn't do me any good. If I put on
Speaker 1: an augmented reality headset, for example, and stared at let's
Speaker 1: say a famous painting, and instead of getting information about
Speaker 1: the famous painting, I see an exploded view of an
Speaker 1: car engine, that would make no sense. So you have
Speaker 1: to build in technologies in order for the a R
Speaker 1: to understand what it is you're trying to do and
Speaker 1: to augment that experience, which meant that we had to
Speaker 1: wait a pretty good long time for the various technologies
Speaker 1: that we used to to create this relationship to mature
Speaker 1: to a point where it was possible. Sometimes we had
Speaker 1: technologies that would allow us to do it, but it
Speaker 1: required uh tethering headsets to very large computers, which meant
Speaker 1: that you didn't have really any mobility, and uh it
Speaker 1: really limited the usefulness of the actual application. In other cases,
Speaker 1: you could say things like your head tracking technology was
Speaker 1: absolutely necessary for a R to develop the way it did.
Speaker 1: GPS technology as well. Remember it wasn't that long ago
Speaker 1: that we ordinary mere mortals didn't have access to really
Speaker 1: accurate GPS information. For a very long time, that was
Speaker 1: purposefully made less accurate. It was a matter of national defense.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until the nineties that you started to see
Speaker 1: GPS become more accurate for the basic consumer. Wait, back
Speaker 1: in the day, you might get accuracy of up to
Speaker 1: around a hundred meters, which is not great if you're
Speaker 1: looking for the next place to make your turn. If
Speaker 1: it's a hundred meters away, that's that's pretty far. But
Speaker 1: now it's within a few feet, so it's much better.
Speaker 1: That sort of stuff all had to come together in
Speaker 1: order for augmented reality to become a viable I almost
Speaker 1: said a reality, but that just starts to sound redundant
Speaker 1: at any rate. Let's talk about some of these technologies
Speaker 1: we are We really need things like gyroscopes, accelerometers. These
Speaker 1: help devices understand their orientation where they are in respect
Speaker 1: to something else, like are they for a smartphone it
Speaker 1: might be is it in landscape mode or portrait mode?
Speaker 1: But for a head mounted display, it would help give
Speaker 1: the the unit the information that needs to know which
Speaker 1: way you're looking, like are you looking to the east
Speaker 1: or to the west. That kind of thing. UH also
Speaker 1: compasses obviously very important GPS sensors, image recognition software, but
Speaker 1: has become really important so that when you are looking
Speaker 1: at something UH, the system can actually identify what that is.
Speaker 1: In some cases you can get around this. You can
Speaker 1: design an a R system where let's say you make
Speaker 1: a movie poster and the a R application has the
Speaker 1: movie poster or animate in some way if you hold
Speaker 1: up a smartphone that's running the appropriate app. So I'm
Speaker 1: just gonna take a movie from my past that does
Speaker 1: not have an a R movie poster or associated with it,
Speaker 1: but one that I can talk about as if it.
Speaker 1: We're a good example, and that has to be Big
Speaker 1: Trouble in Little China, universally declared the best movie that
Speaker 1: has ever been made. So you've got your Big Trouble
Speaker 1: and Little China poster up on the wall, and you
Speaker 1: hold up your smartphone and you activate your Big Trouble
Speaker 1: and Little China movie marketing app, and the camera on
Speaker 1: your phone detects the poster it you know the posters
Speaker 1: there well. The app and the poster together are able
Speaker 1: to construct the augmented experience because there have been elements
Speaker 1: put into the poster that the app is looking for.
Speaker 1: And once the app identifies that, like, it sees maybe
Speaker 1: eight different points on the poster, and because of the
Speaker 1: orientation of those points, it knows what angle it's at
Speaker 1: what height it's at in relation to the phone, and
Speaker 1: can give you on your display the augmented reality experience.
Speaker 1: In this case, it's obviously Jack Burton and the pork
Speaker 1: Chop Express eating a sandwich, because, as we know, the
Speaker 1: most riveting scene in the movie unfolds in this way.
Speaker 1: So that would be kind of an augmented reality experience
Speaker 1: where you didn't have to worry about every possible application
Speaker 1: down in the real world. You made it for something
Speaker 1: very specific, which means in your software you can have
Speaker 1: the camera look quote unquote for these particular points of
Speaker 1: reference and thus create the augmented experience in that way.
Speaker 1: If you want to take that and move it to
Speaker 1: the real world where you can see augmented information about
Speaker 1: just the world around you, it becomes way more complicated.
Speaker 1: You have to have very sophisticated image recognition software so
Speaker 1: that the camera picks up the images, the software processes
Speaker 1: the information, identifies what those images are, and gives you
Speaker 1: the relevant information. So working with all the sensors, augmented
Speaker 1: reality can make this a possibility. So another example, let's
Speaker 1: say you're out on the street in Atlanta. You're here
Speaker 1: in my hometown at and a 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 something that would tap into the GPS cordints
Speaker 1: on your phone, so it would know where your location
Speaker 1: was and help narrow that down. The compass would tell
Speaker 1: it what direction you are facing the the camera angle.
Speaker 1: Also we 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. Typically,
Speaker 1: you also have to have some other method to communicate
Speaker 1: with a larger infrastructure, because we don't have the capability
Speaker 1: of building an enormously powerful computer that has all this
Speaker 1: real world information programmed into it and make it a
Speaker 1: handheld or wearable device. So usually you have to pair
Speaker 1: these devices with some other larger infrastructure. Sometimes it's a
Speaker 1: double handshake. For example, with Google Glass, you would use
Speaker 1: Bluetooth to connect Google Glass to a smartphone. Then the
Speaker 1: smartphone would have the connection to the larger internet through
Speaker 1: your smartphones UH cell service provider. So while you're experiencing
Speaker 1: the augmented reality through the Google Glass, it's actually communicating
Speaker 1: through your phone to the infrastructure to get the data
Speaker 1: it needs to show you the information. It's showing you
Speaker 1: very important elements. And all of these components, like I said,
Speaker 1: came together more or less around the same time. Most
Speaker 1: of them were being developed independently of each other, and
Speaker 1: it's just that now we're seeing them all converge. That's
Speaker 1: an old favorite word here at tech stuff converge together
Speaker 1: to create the augmented reality experience and make it possible.
Speaker 1: So how did we get here? How did these different
Speaker 1: elements develop? Well, there are a whole bunch of technology
Speaker 1: pioneers who really create the foundation for augmented reality as
Speaker 1: well as virtual reality and mixed reality. But one that
Speaker 1: I think we really need to concentrate on at first
Speaker 1: is Ivan Sutherland. Now. Sutherland was born in Hastings, Nebraska
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty eight, and as a kid, he was
Speaker 1: fascinated with mathematics, particularly geometry, and also with engineering. He
Speaker 1: began to study and experiment with computers while he was
Speaker 1: in school, and this was at a time where personal
Speaker 1: computers weren't a thing. There were no personal computers at
Speaker 1: this point. Computers were actually pretty rare, and they were huge,
Speaker 1: and in fact, they often would rely upon physical media
Speaker 1: formats like punch punch cards or paper tape to read
Speaker 1: a program him. So you didn't even have a disc
Speaker 1: or like certainly nothing like a USB thumb drive or
Speaker 1: anything like that. You you actually had to put physical
Speaker 1: media into the machine for it to read and then
Speaker 1: execute whatever program you had designed for that device. He
Speaker 1: went to college at what is now Carnegie Mellon University
Speaker 1: on a full scholarship. He graduated with a Bachelor of
Speaker 1: Science degree. He would then go on to earn a
Speaker 1: master's degree at cal Tech and a PhD in electrical
Speaker 1: engineering from m I T And actually his doctoral thesis
Speaker 1: supervisor was Claude Shannon. And we talked about Claude Shannon
Speaker 1: back in the two thousand and fourteen episode Who Is
Speaker 1: Claude Shannon. Um. We recorded that not too long after
Speaker 1: Shannon's passing, So if you want to hear a really
Speaker 1: interesting story about a pioneer in computer science, you should
Speaker 1: go check out that two thousand and fourteen episode. Back
Speaker 1: to Sutherland. For his thesis, he created something called sketch
Speaker 1: pack AD and that was really, by most accounts, the
Speaker 1: first computer graphical user interface, or gooey. A graphical user
Speaker 1: interface means that you interact with the computer through graphics
Speaker 1: representing various commands on the computer. Windows and the Mac
Speaker 1: operating system are both examples of graphical user interfaces, as
Speaker 1: is the interface on your smartphone. If you have a
Speaker 1: smartphone where you choose applications on a screen, that's a
Speaker 1: graphical user interface. Well, Sutherland created what is largely considered
Speaker 1: to be the first one of those. After college, he
Speaker 1: entered military service and he was assigned to the National
Speaker 1: Security Agency. We have great friends there. I assume I'm
Speaker 1: sure they're listening, because they're listening to everything at any rate.
Speaker 1: He entered the n s A as an electrical engineer,
Speaker 1: and in nineteen sixty four he replaced J. C. R.
Speaker 1: Lick Lighter as the head of DARPA's Information Processing Techniques
Speaker 1: Office or ip TO. And also by back then DARPA
Speaker 1: wasn't DARPA, it was just ARPA. Uh so this is
Speaker 1: the same group, by the way, that would end up
Speaker 1: doing a lot of work that would form the ARPANETTE
Speaker 1: a few years later, and the Arpanette was the predecessor
Speaker 1: to the Internet in some ways. At least, the ARPANET
Speaker 1: was what ended up being the building blocks for the
Speaker 1: infrastructure that would become the Internet. Now, all of that
Speaker 1: work happened after Sutherland had already departed the organization. His
Speaker 1: work became a fundamental component of both virtual and augmented reality.
Speaker 1: As I mentioned earlier in n he wrote a piece
Speaker 1: and essay. It's very short, it's very easy read, and
Speaker 1: you can find it online. The title of the essay
Speaker 1: is the Ultimate Display. And if you ever do any
Speaker 1: research and virtual reality or augmented reality, this essay is
Speaker 1: going to pop up in your research, so go ahead
Speaker 1: and read it. It's like two pages long, so it
Speaker 1: goes very quickly. In that essay he talked about several ideas,
Speaker 1: including the idealized display, the ultimate display, something that would
Speaker 1: be the furthest you could go with display technology. Now,
Speaker 1: keep in mind in his time, by his time, he's
Speaker 1: still alive, by the way, but this time in the
Speaker 1: nineties sixties, he uh, you know, things were just restricted
Speaker 1: to monitors. You might have a light pen, but usually
Speaker 1: you would just use a keyboard. Like it was pretty
Speaker 1: bare bones. But he said, let's push this as far
Speaker 1: as we can imagine it. And in his example, he
Speaker 1: thought of a room that would be completely controlled by computers.
Speaker 1: Everything you would experience within that room would be generated
Speaker 1: by a computer. Everything you see here, smell, taste, and touch,
Speaker 1: all of it generated by computers. The computer would even
Speaker 1: be able to form physical objects out of ror matter itself. Now,
Speaker 1: he wasn't suggesting that this would ever be a device
Speaker 1: that we would actually be able to build. He was
Speaker 1: just saying, what is the ultimate incarnation of display technology?
Speaker 1: And if you read it, you realize, oh, this is
Speaker 1: where the Star Trek Next Generation writers got their idea
Speaker 1: for the Holidack. But unlike Star Trek the Next Generation,
Speaker 1: the Ultimate Display would not go on the fritz every
Speaker 1: other episode and try to kill the crew. It was
Speaker 1: better than that. The Ultimate Display was sort of a
Speaker 1: a foundational like Philosophically, it was foundational for virtual reality
Speaker 1: and augmented reality. This idea of a very immersive experience
Speaker 1: where you, as a user are surrounded somehow by this
Speaker 1: computer generated experience. And that's true both with augmented reality
Speaker 1: and virtual reality and augmented reality. The real world is
Speaker 1: still there, but you get this enhanced experience that is
Speaker 1: completely computer generated. So in nineteen sixty eight, Sutherland and
Speaker 1: a student named Danny Cohen would create a VR, a
Speaker 1: R head mounted display or h MD, and they nicknamed
Speaker 1: it the Sword of Damocles. Why because you had to
Speaker 1: suspend it from the ceiling. It was too heavy to
Speaker 1: wear on your head. You needed it to be nice
Speaker 1: and sturdy. Uh. It included transparent lenses, which meant you
Speaker 1: could overlay computer information on the lenses themselves, and thus
Speaker 1: you could look through the lenses at the real world
Speaker 1: and have these wire framed graphics on top of what
Speaker 1: you were looking at. And it also had a magnetic
Speaker 1: tracking system, meaning that it had sensors that could detect
Speaker 1: magnetic fields, and as you turned your head or you
Speaker 1: change the inclination of your head, it would change the
Speaker 1: magnetic field and this would be relayed as a command
Speaker 1: to the visual center. The actual lenses themselves, so that
Speaker 1: it would the change would be reflected in what you saw.
Speaker 1: So if you have a virtual environment and you turn
Speaker 1: your head to the left, you want the view within
Speaker 1: the virtual environment to go to the left too, But
Speaker 1: without head tracking technology that's impossible. So this was a
Speaker 1: very early example of head tracking technology. And again it
Speaker 1: 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 HMD was made in nineteen I take issue
Speaker 1: with that. I don't think of the sort of Damocles
Speaker 1: as the first head mounted display. That to me should
Speaker 1: go to a different invention called the head site h
Speaker 1: E A D s I g h T. Now that
Speaker 1: was developed by Phil Coo, 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 mechanical,
Speaker 1: 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 to the right, it pans to the right.
Speaker 1: That sort of thing. It was meant to be a
Speaker 1: way for for people to operate a camera in a
Speaker 1: remote location that might not be very friendly to a
Speaker 1: human 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 proceeded
Speaker 1: the sort of Damocles by about seven years. That came
Speaker 1: out around night sixty one. But again it wasn't a
Speaker 1: virtual reality headset or an augmented reality headset. It was
Speaker 1: kind of a like I said, a remote viewfinder. But
Speaker 1: still 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, Myra Krueger or Doctor Myron Krueger. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, Dr Krueger created an augmented reality lab called
Speaker 1: video Place. Uh, he was really into this idea of
Speaker 1: seeing the interaction of technology and people in artistic ways.
Speaker 1: He really wanted to explore artistic expressions using technology and
Speaker 1: people working together. So he wanted to create an artificial
Speaker 1: reality environment that didn't require the user to wear special equipment.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't have to put on a head mold display,
Speaker 1: or wear special gloves, or use any kind of device
Speaker 1: to control your actions, because that's a barrier between you
Speaker 1: and the experience. Instead, his version consisted of a laboratory
Speaker 1: that had several rooms all network together, and each room
Speaker 1: had a video camera in it and a projector and
Speaker 1: a screen. Now, the video camera would pick up the
Speaker 1: motions of the person inside the room, it would send
Speaker 1: information to the projector, which would then project the person's
Speaker 1: silhouette on the screen. And the silhouette was typically a
Speaker 1: really bright color, and you could move around and your
Speaker 1: silhouette would move around, so you almost became like a
Speaker 1: puppet master controlling your own silhouette. But then he started
Speaker 1: to incorporate other things, like other elements that were virtually
Speaker 1: on the screen. The projector was projecting things that were
Speaker 1: on the screen but not in the actual real room itself.
Speaker 1: So imagine a ball and a ball is being projected
Speaker 1: on the screen. Well, you could move around so that
Speaker 1: your silhouette would interact with the ball and the ball
Speaker 1: would bounce away. That sort of thing. So you would
Speaker 1: be able to interact with virtual environments by moving around
Speaker 1: in a real physical space. And while those objects weren't
Speaker 1: really there in front of you, you could see the
Speaker 1: representation of them on the screen. And this was really
Speaker 1: powerful stuff. And remember I said these rooms were all
Speaker 1: network together, so you could actually have a system where
Speaker 1: a person in one room and a person in another
Speaker 1: room both have their silhouettes projected together in their respective
Speaker 1: rooms on the screen, and your silhouette would be one color,
Speaker 1: the other person's silhouette would be a different color, and
Speaker 1: you could interact with one another. And according to reports
Speaker 1: from this art experiment, they noticed that whenever people would
Speaker 1: have their silhouettes cross one another, they would actually recoil
Speaker 1: in their physical rooms. Keep in mind, they're in different rooms,
Speaker 1: they're not in the same one together, they would recoil
Speaker 1: as if they had made physical contact or bumped into someone.
Speaker 1: So it showed that there was a very powerful psychological
Speaker 1: element to this virtual presence. And again that psychological element
Speaker 1: plays a huge important role in VR and a R
Speaker 1: research and development, not just for creating products, but just
Speaker 1: to understand how we process information and incorporated into our
Speaker 1: sense of reality. Not to get too deep for you guys,
Speaker 1: So experimentation in the field continued over the years. In
Speaker 1: the early nine eighties, Dr Krueger would write a book
Speaker 1: and publish it about artificial realities. But while the principles
Speaker 1: for augmented reality were established, the technologies were still rather unwieldy.
Speaker 1: They were large, they weren't reliable, and it would require
Speaker 1: several years of work to improve those technologies, to create
Speaker 1: miniaturization strategies to get the elements down to a size
Speaker 1: that was more practical for that sort of use and
Speaker 1: wouldn't require you to have a head mound display mounted
Speaker 1: to the ceiling. And all of that took time, but
Speaker 1: you could tell that the ideas underlying augmented and virtual
Speaker 1: reality were already in place. There was a Boeing researcher
Speaker 1: named Tom Coudell who coined the term augmented reality, and
Speaker 1: he was specifically using it to talk about this approach
Speaker 1: to overlaying digital information on top of our physical world
Speaker 1: to enhance it in some way. Now Dr Cardell earned
Speaker 1: a PhD in physics and astronomy from the University of Arizona,
Speaker 1: and before contributing the term augmented reality to the public lexicon,
Speaker 1: he did extensive work and artificial intelligence research and development.
Speaker 1: He also became a professor in the fields of electrical
Speaker 1: and computer engineering at the University of New Mexico. So
Speaker 1: when he was working with Boeing, he used this phrase
Speaker 1: to talk about specific system he was working on, an
Speaker 1: augmented reality system, and the whole purpose of this was
Speaker 1: to 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 aft,
Speaker 1: and that way you could follow the directions that you
Speaker 1: see through your display, lay the actual cable down where
Speaker 1: the guide tells you to go, and then you would
Speaker 1: have a properly wired airplane. Uh. And I'm sure, as
Speaker 1: we're all aware, properly wired airplanes are good airplanes. Improperly
Speaker 1: wired airplanes are not so good. So it was a
Speaker 1: very important system to make this much more smooth and
Speaker 1: fast and it meant that you didn't have to have
Speaker 1: as as many experts to guide the process. You could
Speaker 1: actually have someone come in who had never done this
Speaker 1: before and just follow the directions through this augmented reality
Speaker 1: set system and they could wire the airplane properly. So
Speaker 1: really clever means of using augmented reality. Also, we would
Speaker 1: end up seeing that same sort of philosophy used again
Speaker 1: and again in the future in more sophisticated UH types
Speaker 1: of technology, but it was the exact same approach, exact
Speaker 1: same idea underlying it. In Lewis Rosenberg proposed a system
Speaker 1: that the Air Force could use to allow someone to
Speaker 1: control devices from a remote location, and that consisted of
Speaker 1: a video camera which would provide the visual data to
Speaker 1: the user through a head mounted display. They would wear
Speaker 1: the display on their heads or they would look at
Speaker 1: a screen, but typically they'd wear a display, and then
Speaker 1: they would also wear an exoskeleton on their upper body
Speaker 1: that would allow them to control some sort of robotic device,
Speaker 1: typically robotic arms. And usually the way this would work
Speaker 1: is that the display was designed in such a way
Speaker 1: with the video camera so that the view that the
Speaker 1: person had it made it look like the robot arms
Speaker 1: were their actual arms, which required a little bit of
Speaker 1: trickery on the part of Rosenberg. They had to fudge
Speaker 1: the distances between the video camera and the robotic arms
Speaker 1: to give this this sort of feeling that the robot
Speaker 1: arms represented your actual arms. So you move your arms
Speaker 1: inside the exoskeleton and the robot arms would move as
Speaker 1: well at their remote location, so you it's kind of
Speaker 1: like a really fancy remote control. Now imagine that the
Speaker 1: robot arms are holding various tools. Uh. The suit would
Speaker 1: also provide haptic feedback, that touch based feedback to let
Speaker 1: a user know more about what is going on when
Speaker 1: they're operating the arms. So if you were to have
Speaker 1: do something that would make a robot arm encounter resistance,
Speaker 1: then you would feel haptic feedback in the suit that
Speaker 1: would indicate, oh, you're you're going beyond the parameters of
Speaker 1: where this robot arm is capable of going. So you
Speaker 1: learned very quickly where where you can operate within that
Speaker 1: suit and make sure that you are not pushing it
Speaker 1: beyond its limits. You could also uh end up using
Speaker 1: these tools to do various things in this remote environment. Now,
Speaker 1: Rosenberg called his system virtual fixtures, which meant that the
Speaker 1: user would see these virtual overlays on top of a
Speaker 1: real environment that they were looking at. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to give a very basic example that to illustrate this,
Speaker 1: because it's hard to imagine, it's hard to get it
Speaker 1: across in words. But let's say you're looking through a
Speaker 1: headmund display and in front of you is a board,
Speaker 1: wooden board, and it's just a regular wooden board. There's
Speaker 1: nothing painted on it or anything in the real world,
Speaker 1: and it's in a room that's across the building from you.
Speaker 1: You cannot see this with your own eyes. You can
Speaker 1: only see it through the video camera. The virtual fixture
Speaker 1: overlay might be a series of circles, and the circles
Speaker 1: are things that you were meant to cut out of
Speaker 1: the board using the robot arms and a tool that's
Speaker 1: right there in side the physical environment, across the building
Speaker 1: from you. So you follow the patterns that you see
Speaker 1: in this virtual overlay and you complete the task. That's
Speaker 1: a very simple example, and uh, this system was meant
Speaker 1: to allow for that. That's what he would call the
Speaker 1: virtual fixtures, these overlays that you would see that would
Speaker 1: appear to be real, but actually we're not present in
Speaker 1: the physical environment itself. Now, also in a group of
Speaker 1: researchers at Columbia University, we're proposing a system that they
Speaker 1: called the knowledge based Augmented Reality for Maintenance Assistance a
Speaker 1: k a. Karma Cute. Their approach was pretty novel. They
Speaker 1: pointed out that while augmented reality had tremendous potential, it
Speaker 1: also had a really big barrier and that it takes
Speaker 1: an enormous amount of time to design or animate and
Speaker 1: implement these graphic overlays for a R applications. So say
Speaker 1: you're in a room and you're looking at different objects,
Speaker 1: and little labels are popping up for each object. If
Speaker 1: you're having to do all that by hand, it takes
Speaker 1: a huge amount of time. What they wanted to do
Speaker 1: was create artificial intelligence systems, or at least techniques to
Speaker 1: generate graphics automatically on the fly. So this would be
Speaker 1: similar to using image recognition software, so that if you
Speaker 1: look at a specific box, let's say, the image recognition
Speaker 1: software might be able to map that box to a
Speaker 1: specific product and thus give you an overlay of information
Speaker 1: about the product that would be inside that box, and
Speaker 1: it would be able to do all this automatically. It
Speaker 1: would not require a human programmer to go through and
Speaker 1: and look at every single product in every single type
Speaker 1: of box and program all that out. That would be ridiculous,
Speaker 1: It would take forever. So it was the work of
Speaker 1: this group with Karma that really started the ball rolling
Speaker 1: with this AI approach to automatically fill in that information
Speaker 1: and make a are a more practical experience. Around the
Speaker 1: same time, between ninety two and nine, the Laurel Western
Speaker 1: Development Labs, which was a defense contractor, began to work
Speaker 1: with the U. S Military to create a R systems
Speaker 1: for military vehicles. And you can understand very quickly how
Speaker 1: a R would have enormous potential for military applications. And
Speaker 1: in fact, a R is very commonly used in lots
Speaker 1: of different things like pilot helmets where it helps pilots
Speaker 1: keep track of targets UH and identify a 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 nine because that's the
Speaker 1: way the military works. They're not so eager to talk
Speaker 1: about their stuff while are still doing it. Meanwhile, at
Speaker 1: the same time, artists were continuing to explore the relationships
Speaker 1: between physical performers and virtual LM. And so you remember
Speaker 1: I talked about Dr Krueger earlier. While in nine different
Speaker 1: artist Julie Martin would create a piece called Dancing in Cyberspace,
Speaker 1: and in that piece, dancers on a physical space or
Speaker 1: a physical stage. We're able to manipulate virtual objects, so
Speaker 1: an audience would be able to see both the physical
Speaker 1: performance by the dancers and the virtual reactions the things
Speaker 1: that happened within the virtual environment as a result of
Speaker 1: the dancers moving around their physical space. Pretty neat. Two researchers,
Speaker 1: Recky Motto 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 and held
Speaker 1: device through the cable to the workstation, and it could
Speaker 1: detect color coded markers in the camera image and display
Speaker 1: information on a video see through view. So you can
Speaker 1: get that augmented reality experience. Obviously very limited, you know,
Speaker 1: you could not just carry this around with you everywhere
Speaker 1: you go, but it showed the ideas behind augmented reality
Speaker 1: could in fact be realized in a handheld format. Now
Speaker 1: it's just a matter of getting those different components small
Speaker 1: enough to all fit in a self contained mobile form factor. Now,
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 Thrash years 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've 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. Adila 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 estab 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 view,
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 spacecraft, and on top of that view
Speaker 1: they could overlay map data to help with navigation. And
Speaker 1: all of that, of course was controlled back here on Earth.
Speaker 1: But it was sort of an experiment to see how
Speaker 1: augmented reality could be incorporated into space exploration missions. In
Speaker 1: the future and make them more effective. Also, in the
Speaker 1: Navy began work on the Battlefield Augmented Reality System or BARS,
Speaker 1: which is a wearable a R system for soldiers. You've
Speaker 1: probably seen various implementations of this over the years. Is
Speaker 1: obviously evolved since nine It's one of those pieces of
Speaker 1: technology that some soldiers took to, but a lot just
Speaker 1: felt that it created unnecessary distractions. Technology and warfare is
Speaker 1: very very difficult because there are sometimes where we think, oh,
Speaker 1: more information and is always better, but in some cases
Speaker 1: that doesn't seem to hold true. And for some people
Speaker 1: with these head mounted displays or or really it's heads
Speaker 1: up displays HUDs uh, that can sometimes be the case,
Speaker 1: depends on the implementation. In two thousand, hiro Katsu Kato
Speaker 1: created a software library called a R Toolkit. Very important
Speaker 1: software library was also open source, so anyone could contribute
Speaker 1: to it, modify it. Brent put out a new version
Speaker 1: that sort of stuff, and it uses video tracking to
Speaker 1: overlay computer graphics on a video camera feed and it's
Speaker 1: still a component for a lot of a our experiences today.
Speaker 1: Later on in the two thousand's this would be adapted
Speaker 1: so that it could also be used in Web experiences,
Speaker 1: not just native experiences to specific devices, and we continue
Speaker 1: to see are built into new experiences, including smartphone and tablets.
Speaker 1: By two thousand four, some researchers in Germany were creating
Speaker 1: a r apps that could take advantage of a smartphones camera.
Speaker 1: But two thousand four's pretty early for smartphones. It really
Speaker 1: would would be a few years before this would truly
Speaker 1: take off, because that's when Apple came out with the
Speaker 1: iPhone in two thousand seven. That was the real revolution
Speaker 1: in smartphone technology. There have been smartphones before the iPhone,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, and many of them were really good,
Speaker 1: but the iPhone was something that caught the public's attention
Speaker 1: and made smartphones sexy. And because of that, there was
Speaker 1: a ton of money poured into the smartphone industry as
Speaker 1: well as not just Apple, but also to other companies,
Speaker 1: like the companies that were offering Android smartphones. But I
Speaker 1: think we can really thank Apple for all of that
Speaker 1: happening in the first place, especially things like seeing that
Speaker 1: accelerometer where you could switch from portrait to landscape mode.
Speaker 1: I remember everyone freaking out about that when Steve Jobs
Speaker 1: showed it off in two thousand seven at Macworld and
Speaker 1: everyone thought, Wow, this is the this is amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: we take it for granted now, but it was a
Speaker 1: big deal then. So once that smartphone revolution happened, it
Speaker 1: was a landslide victory for both augmented reality and virtual
Speaker 1: reality research and development because it meant that so much
Speaker 1: money was being poured into creating newer, thinner, more capable
Speaker 1: smartphones that we saw an explosion in technological development that
Speaker 1: could also be used for virtual and augmented reality experiences. So,
Speaker 1: for example, I think of those sensors I talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: accelerometers and gyroscopes, that sort of thing. Well, we saw
Speaker 1: a lot of development in those spaces in order to
Speaker 1: make smartphones better, and people who are working in a
Speaker 1: R and VR experiences can take advantage of those same
Speaker 1: sensors either creating apps specifically four smartphones. Thus you don't
Speaker 1: have to build any other hardware, you just use existing hardware,
Speaker 1: but that limits how you can use it, right because
Speaker 1: you don't typically wear your smartphone directly in front of
Speaker 1: your face. Or they could end up taking advantage of
Speaker 1: those new, smaller sensors and incorporate them directly into brand
Speaker 1: new hardware, like various types of wearables like Google Glass,
Speaker 1: for example, but that would be a few more years.
Speaker 1: In two thousand eleven, Nintendo launched the Nintendo three D S,
Speaker 1: which included a camera. It was, you know, the three
Speaker 1: D capable handheld device, and included actually a pair of
Speaker 1: forward facing cameras, so you could take three D photos
Speaker 1: if you wanted to, and it also had some a
Speaker 1: R software included with it. You would get these special
Speaker 1: Nintendo cards kind of like playing cards, and if you
Speaker 1: were to point the camera of the three D S
Speaker 1: at the card and look at the screen, you would
Speaker 1: see a little virtual three dimensional character pop up on
Speaker 1: the card. So Mario would be an obvious example. You
Speaker 1: put the Mario card down on the table, you hold
Speaker 1: up the three D S, and you aim the camera
Speaker 1: at the card, and you look at the screen and
Speaker 1: there's Mario, and Mario appears to be jumping around on
Speaker 1: your physical table. Now, obviously, if you look off of
Speaker 1: the display, there's no Mario jumping around, but on the
Speaker 1: display there he is, and it was pretty cute. I
Speaker 1: remember being really impressed with this very simple implementation of
Speaker 1: a R when we got our three DS, and then
Speaker 1: I took our three DS apart and then I took
Speaker 1: pictures of it, and then I posted on Twitter and
Speaker 1: people got sad, it's a great day. In two thousand thirteen,
Speaker 1: Google introduced Google Glass. That was the wearable that included
Speaker 1: 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: didn't get in the way too much. You too to
Speaker 1: look at the screen. You actually had a glimpse, you know,
Speaker 1: the 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.
Speaker 1: Um I had a pair of these Google Glass and
Speaker 1: I really liked the direction they were going in. I
Speaker 1: felt 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 and early and
Speaker 1: now you can't get them anymore. Uh. They were clever,
Speaker 1: but they were expensive, and they had some limitations. And
Speaker 1: like I was saying earlier, you know, it's hard to
Speaker 1: build all the components you need into one headset. So
Speaker 1: Google Glass would communicate via Bluetooth to your smartphone, and
Speaker 1: your smartphone would act as the actual nexus point to
Speaker 1: the Internet. But it was a neat idea, uh, and
Speaker 1: I enjoyed getting to use them while I did, so
Speaker 1: I keep hoping to see a return of that kind
Speaker 1: of technology, but perhaps in a more mature and less
Speaker 1: expensive format. Now we've also seen applications similar to the
Speaker 1: ones we mentioned earlier, the ones that are meant to
Speaker 1: guide people into laying out or repairing a system. We've
Speaker 1: seen that in the car world. Not too long ago,
Speaker 1: there was the MARTA system introduced by Volkswagen. MARTA makes
Speaker 1: me chuckle because that's also the name of Atlanta's public
Speaker 1: transportation system, but in this case, it stands for Mobile
Speaker 1: Augmented Reality Technical Assistance and it's specifically designed for mechanics
Speaker 1: who are working on the XL one vehicle. So if
Speaker 1: you hold up an iPad that has this app on it,
Speaker 1: and the camera has pointed at an XCEL one and
Speaker 1: you look at the display, you'll see information overlaid on
Speaker 1: top 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 guy in a way, maintenance and
Speaker 1: repair guide. This is one of those applications of augmented reality.
Speaker 1: I think is a no brainer to me. It's a
Speaker 1: killer app The idea of having an ability to work
Speaker 1: with something you are not familiar with, but you're able
Speaker 1: to leverage the expertise of people who either designed it
Speaker 1: or built it, or just fully understand it, and get
Speaker 1: guidance based on their expertise in real time, so you're
Speaker 1: not having to go and consult a an article about
Speaker 1: it or watch a YouTube video. You get step by
Speaker 1: step instructions overlaid on top of your view of that thing.
Speaker 1: To me, that's the most compelling use of augmented reality
Speaker 1: from a practical standpoint. There are a lot of other
Speaker 1: uses that I'll talk about towards the end that I
Speaker 1: think are also really super cool. So don't get me wrong,
Speaker 1: It's not the only one. But let's move on to
Speaker 1: thousand fifteen. That was when Microsoft would unveil the hollow lens,
Speaker 1: something I still want to try out. I have not
Speaker 1: had a chance to try a hollow lens yet. That
Speaker 1: is a headset cable of advanced a R applications everything
Speaker 1: from what I was just talking about, giving you guidance,
Speaker 1: step by step instructions on how to do like a
Speaker 1: repair job on say an electrical outlet. You can even
Speaker 1: use a Skype system to call an expert who can
Speaker 1: then view your point of view and interact with that
Speaker 1: point of view. So Let's say I'm looking at the outlet.
Speaker 1: The expert electrician i'm talking to can see what I see,
Speaker 1: and he or she can also make notes on the
Speaker 1: display which shows up in my field of view. So
Speaker 1: he or she might circle a specific wire and say
Speaker 1: you need to you need to remove that one first,
Speaker 1: and I know I need to do that one first
Speaker 1: because I can see which one they are talking about.
Speaker 1: Or they might circle another wire and say, no matter
Speaker 1: why you do, don't cut this wire where the toilet
Speaker 1: upstairs will explode like lethal weapon too, and I won't
Speaker 1: do that because you know that guys like three days
Speaker 1: from retirement. So I have a heart. But no, this
Speaker 1: is this is a really neat idea, having this interactive
Speaker 1: ability to overlay the information from the world, the digital world,
Speaker 1: onto your physical world and beyond that. The hollowlens has
Speaker 1: lots of other functions. It's not just something to do,
Speaker 1: you know, home repairs around the house. You can also
Speaker 1: use it for entertainment purposes, like you could create a
Speaker 1: screen that can show you video from various sources and
Speaker 1: you can assign it a place on a wall in
Speaker 1: your environment. Let's say that you're in your living room
Speaker 1: and you just create a screen so you can watch Netflix,
Speaker 1: and you slap it on a wall and it will
Speaker 1: stay in that same position relative to your point of view.
Speaker 1: So if you look to the left or right, the
Speaker 1: screen stays where you put it as if it were
Speaker 1: physically there 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 sixteen, are got
Speaker 1: another big boost from a little game called Pokemon Go.
Speaker 1: Although I have to admit this was a really primitive,
Speaker 1: base sick implementation of augmented reality. Really, it was not
Speaker 1: much more than just a In fact, it was nothing
Speaker 1: more than just an animated overlay that would exist on
Speaker 1: top of the camera view of your of your device.
Speaker 1: So I'd say, I'm holding up my smartphone and I'm
Speaker 1: trying to catch a Jiggli Puff, and the Jiggli Puff
Speaker 1: is currently bouncing up and down on the sidewalk in
Speaker 1: front of me. That's about as far as the augmented
Speaker 1: reality actual experience would go. So very primitive. But because
Speaker 1: Pokemon Go became so popular so quickly, it really pushed
Speaker 1: the concept of a R to the front of the
Speaker 1: minds of people everywhere, including business owners who immediately said,
Speaker 1: we need an augmented reality app. Whether they actually needed
Speaker 1: one or not is beside the point. A lot of
Speaker 1: people got into a R because of Pokemon Go. Uh,
Speaker 1: for both good and bad. I always think that you
Speaker 1: have to come up with the experience first. You have
Speaker 1: to understand why you need to use a specific strategy
Speaker 1: to 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, in 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 OUR 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 or 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 roundings, 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 future or
Speaker 1: think of the future where your privacy is no longer
Speaker 1: even relevant, and you walk down the street and you
Speaker 1: look at all the people's faces who are also walking
Speaker 1: down the street, and you're getting names of everybody and
Speaker 1: what they like and what they dislike. You know, what
Speaker 1: music they tend to listen to, maybe what they're listening
Speaker 1: to right now, And it's all because we've got facial
Speaker 1: recognition technology. Almost everyone has some sort of social media presence,
Speaker 1: so you can map that face to any public profiles,
Speaker 1: try and find a match. If you found a match,
Speaker 1: you could bring back information to the person wearing the glasses,
Speaker 1: 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, this is pretty creepy and invasive, and so
Speaker 1: there are some negative implementations of a ARE that we
Speaker 1: have to watch out for. Unless we get to a
Speaker 1: point 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? But
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. And I hope you
Speaker 1: guys enjoyed that classic episode of text stuff. If you
Speaker 1: have any comments or questions, reach out on social media.
Speaker 1: We are available at text Stuff h s W both
Speaker 1: on Twitter and on Facebook. You can also go to
Speaker 1: our podcast page that's tech Stuff podcast dot com. You
Speaker 1: can find a link to every episode we've ever recorded. There.
Speaker 1: You'll also find a link to our online store, where
Speaker 1: there's lots of tech Stuff merchandise, so you can go
Speaker 1: ahead and spend all that hard earned cash on really
Speaker 1: cool tech stuff products. I mean, seriously, we do have
Speaker 1: some really neat ones. If you haven't checked it out,
Speaker 1: go at least take a look at the designs. I
Speaker 1: think you'll find them amusing, and who knows, maybe you'll
Speaker 1: find a new favorite tote bag or t shirt. Then remember,
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