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From Cyborgs to Project Glass: the Augmented Reality Story

Chris Davies, Apr 9th 2012 Discuss [2]39

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Google’s Project Glass has been through the usual story arc – rumors, a mindblowing concept demo, rabid excitement, practicality doubtsand then simmering mistrust – in a concentrated three month period, but the back story to augmented reality is in its fifth decade. Thedesire to integrate virtual graphics with the realworld in a seamless way can be traced back to the days when computers could do littlemore than trace a few wireframes on a display; it’s been a workinprogress ever since. If Google’s vision left you reeling, the path AR hastaken – and where it might go next – could blow your mind.



"Augmented reality wascoined by Boeing engineers in1992"

In fact, the first real example of augmented reality was demonstrated back in 1968, with Ivan E.Sutherland of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City showing off a headmounted three dimensional display. He described [pdf link]how “kinetic depth effect” – projecting two slightly different images to the user’s eyes, that shift in accordance to their movement – couldbe controlled by different locationtracking systems, though the graphics themselves were merely wireframe outlines.

Sutherland’s idea – although seemingly obvious today – was that if the tracking sensors were accurate enough and the computercreatedgraphics sufficiently responsive, the human brain would comfortably combine them with the realworld view. “Special spectaclescontaining two miniature cathode ray tubes are attached to the user’s head” Sutherland wrote. “A fast, twodimensional, analog linegenerator provides deflection signals to the miniature cathode ray tubes through transistorized deflection amplifiers. Either of two headposition sensors, one mechanical and the other ultrasonic, is used to measure the position of the user’s head.”

“Augmented reality” as a term, meanwhile, was coined several decades later by Boeing engineersTom Caudell and David Mizell. They created a headmounted display of their own, dubbed“HUDset,” in 1992, which could overlay airplane wiring blueprints over generic looms. As withSutherland’s system, a combination of headtracking and individual displays for each eye wereused, though the computer itself could be waistmounted.

Caudell and Mizell also identified one of the key advantages of augmented reality over virtual reality – that is, an entirely computergenerated world – namely that it was less processorintensive. Most of the user’s perspective would already be supplied, with the ARsystem only needing to busy itself with the added details.

However, that opened up a problem of its own: the importance of accurate location and positioning measurements so that virtual graphicswould correctly line up with realworld objects. It’s worth remembering that GPS only became fully operational in 1994, and it wasn’tuntil the new millennium that regular users had access to the accurate data the military had previously solely enjoyed. However grosspositioning information also needed to be supplemented by far more precise information as to head angle, direction and more, unlessSutherland’s original principles would be missed.

While the Boeing system was intended to be used in controlled manufacturing environments, AR and wearables pioneer Steve Mann tookthe technology out into the wilderness. A founding member of the Wearable Computers group at MIT’s Media Lab, now a tenuredprofessor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, Mann actually prefers the term



"Mann’s initial systems wereoutlandishly bulky"

“mediated reality” to AR, and since the 1980s has been sporting wearable computers of his own design. Between 1994 and 1996 he livestreamed the view from a wearable webcam to a publiclyaccessible website, receiving messages from viewers in a headup display; henotoriously described himself as the “world’s first cyborg” to the press, and in 2002 challenged airport security after they allegedly forciblyremoved his equipment causing over $50,000 of damage.

Mann’s initial systems were outlandishly bulky, hampered by the limited battery life and processingpower or portable computers of the time, and included such bizarre elements as “rabbit ear” antennafor wireless connectivity. Nonetheless, the researcher persisted, until by the 1990s the eyepiece itselfwas compact enough to be accommodated in a pair of oversized sunglasses.

In “mediating” the world around him digitally, Mann sought not only to introduce new data into his perspective but reuse and replaceelements of the real environment in ways that more suited his needs. If the personalized advertising of Minority Report has become thedigital bogeyman of AR naysayers, then Mann’s work on socalled Diminished Reality with student James Fung represents mediatedreality wresting back the reins. Mann showed how realworld billboards and signs could be overlaid with his own data, such as messagesor locationbased services alerts, in effect repurposing the visual clutter of adverts into personal screens.

That research went on to help inspire a separate but similar project, The Artvetiser, which overlaid artwork onto adverts identified byoptical recognition. “The Artvertiser software is trained to recognize individual advertisements,” project leads Julian Oliver, DamianStewart and Arturo Castro wrote, “each of which become a virtual ‘canvas’ on which an artist can exhibit images or video when viewedthrough the handheld device. We refer to this as Product Replacement.” A version of their app has already been released for the Androidplatform.



"EyeTap uses a beamsplitterand can be far more discrete"

Along the way, however, some of Mann’s more interesting discoveries have been around the way others react to his wearable tech, ratherthan how he himself necessarily experiences it. “Even a very small size optical element, when placed within the open area of an eyeglasslens, looks unusual” Mann writes. “In normal conversation, people tend to look oneanother right in the eye, and therefore will notice eventhe slightest speck of dust on an eyeglass lens.”

In fact, he suggests, less attention is drawn when both lenses have the same apparent display assembly in place, even if only one half of itactually works, as the symmetry is less jarring. He also coined the term sousveillance [pdf link], effectively the inverse of surveillance,where “bodyborne audiovisual and other sensors [are used for] capture, storage, recall, and processing” of the world around theindividual.

Most recently, Mann has been working on EyeTap, the latest iteration of his wearable displaytechnology. Unlike much of his earlier research, which was released for others to tinker with andadapt, EyeTap has been more aggressively patented amid talk of a commercial release. Wherecurrent wearable displays – such as the Lumus panels we saw recently – have been “oneway”,adding computer graphics to the field of view but relying on a separate camera for digital input,EyeTap uses a beamsplitter directly ahead of the eye to bounce the incoming light down a fiberoptic path to a socalled aremac(“camera” backwards), and then return it.



"These aren’t tiny brands, wecan expect some highprofilewearables"

This aremac can process the incoming light, modify it and then bounce it back to the beamsplitter to be overlaid on top of the realworldview. The system means the visible components of the display can be far more discrete: in a custom setup crafted by Mann and RappOptical, the beamsplitter is a tiny angled block in the center of the right lens, with the fiberoptic path and other components actuallymaking up the frame itself. More bulky components can be hidden either at the back of the neck or in a pocket.

Mann proposed that even the tiny beamsplitter could be further reduced, bringing it down to something along the lines of the etchinginvolved in regular bifocal lenses. However, the EyeTap project has been quiet, at least publicly, since the late 2000s, and there’s no signof the commercial version – which looks more like a Borg eyepiece [pdf link] than the discrete Rapp prototype – shown before.

That leaves others to take the field, and the past few years have seen no shortage of augmented reality concepts of which Project Glass isonly the most recent. Nokia’s Mixed Reality idea of 2009 was, like the nowlampooned Google video, merely a “what if” render but thepieces are finally slotting into place for products you can actually go out and buy.

Last month, Lumus confirmed to us that it is supplying wearable eyepieces to several OEMs whichplan to launch as early as 2013. These aren’t tiny brands off the radar, either; the company wouldn’tconfirm any names, but told us we could expect some highprofile, readily recognized firms on theroster. Gaming, multimedia and smartphonestyle functionality have all been cited as possible usecases.



Pricing shouldn’t be skyhigh, too: Lumus doesn’t decide the RRP, obviously, but the goalposts have apparently been set at between $200and $600, depending on the complexity of the wearables, whether they use a separate wired processing pack or run off batteries integratedinto the glasses themselves, and if they offer monocular or binocular AR vision. Even Google – not, to be clear, necessarily a Lumus client– is confident it can translate Project Glass from glitzy mockup to realworld device. “It’ll happen,” project member and Google VPSebastian Thrun insisted to skeptics, “I promise.”

With technology finally catching up to mainstream ambitions, the next challenge is convincing the public that wearables are somethingthey might want to, well, wear. One regular criticism of Project Glass (like other AR systems before it) has been that it will create a worldof evermore insular people, not even having to pull out their smartphones in order to put up a barrier between them and the realworld.

That’s a matter of software, largely, but also of ethos. It’s notable that Steve Mann’s key EyeTap patents express the wearable primarily asa newscasting and sharing system: as something that can create a communal experience divorced from physical proximity:”In wearableembodiments of the invention, a journalist wearing the apparatus becomes, after adaptation, an entity that seeks, without conscious thoughtor effort, an optimal point of vantage and camera orientation. Moreover, the journalist can easily become part of a human intelligencenetwork, and draw upon the intellectual resources and technical photographic skills of a large community. Because of the journalist’sability to constantly see the world through the apparatus of the invention, which may also function as an image enhancement device, theapparatus behaves as a true extension of the journalist’s mind and body, giving rise to a new genre of documentary video. In this way, itfunctions as a seamless communications medium that uses a realitybased userinterface” EyeTap patent 6,614,408 description



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The smartphone has become our gateway into digital social networking: any disconnect between it and the realworld arguably comesabout because the method of delivery is inefficient. Google’s concept of bouncing icons and popup dialog bubbles may not address thatentirely, but if the recent avalanche of smartphones and mobile apps is anything to go by, put hardware into developers’ hands and – nomatter how rudimentary – the software will swiftly progress. A “seamless communications medium that uses a realitybased userinterface” is how Mann describes it: sciencefiction becoming science fact.

Story Timeline

Google Project Glass smart glasses revealedYou don't want Google's Project GlassMy wallet is open, Google, now hand over Project GlassGoogle Project Glass: Siri or Clippy?Could Nokia beat Project Glass to the AR market?Project Glass parody video calls Google's bluffGoogle's Sergey Brin caught wearing Project GlassGoogle's Brin: Project Glass will be selfcontainedGoogle cofounder's Project Glass outing gets highres revealGoogle Project Glass still 'years away'

[Image credits: EyeTap, Steve Mann, Daniel Wagner]

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SlaVhGeaU - WearCamwearcam.org/mcdonalds_news/From Cyborgs to Project Glass...In fact, the first real example of augmented reality was demonstrated back in 1968, with Ivan E. Sutherland