Epson and Meta Augmented Reality Glasses Take on Google Glass

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First Look at Project Glass: Google’s Augmented Reality Goggles

We’ve been intrigued by Google’s augmented reality glasses since we caught wind of the top-secret project a few months ago, and now the company has come out with a lot more details about the venture. In a post shared on Google Plus Wednesday, Google released a teaser video showing off some of the remarkable features of the HUD contraption. Dubbed “Project Glass,” this Google X Labs initiative is like a virtual alert system veil over your eyes, which responds to spoken commands as you make your way through your busy day.

In the demo video, we’re placed in the shoes of a guy who’s supposedly donned the futuristic frames, and we follow him as he accomplishes small missions all over New York City. He looks outside and checks the weather, inspects his appointments, shoots off a text message, navigates a new course when his regular route is blocked, sets a reminder, looks up a friend’s location, snaps and shares a photo, controls his music and conducts a video call. Click on the embedded media below to check out how neat the AR goggles are in action yourself.

Google also revealed the design study for the prototype — a silver wrap-around frame which looks exactly the odd sort of spectacle you’d expect from a science fiction story — but “dozens of other shapes and variations” of the glasses are reportedly being built. According to The New York Times, we may even see augmented reality contact lenses in the future, since it’s now possible to embed electronics into tiny contact lenses that will project pixels right into a person’s eye.

The glasses are not yet for sale, but they could allegedly drop into the market by the end of the year. However, Google employees are already testing the glasses out in the public, so if you spot someone sporting a pair of the Star Trek-like bifocals, don’t be alarmed. But you may want to duck out of their way lest they beam your identity up back up to the cloud.

via The New York Times

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TechMama: Are Augmented Reality Toys Bad for Your Kids?

Augmented reality tech toys are fundamentally changing the way kids interact with their toys. I explain it to my non-geeky friends by paraphrasing lines from “Star Wars”, “Augmented Reality is what gives a Jedi his power. It’s an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us and penetrates us.”  These toys use technology to capture the real physical environment around the player and convert it into interactive digital surroundings. The technology within gaming consoles enabling this real-time digital interaction include:

1. Cameras “see” the players and their physical environment: Cameras in gaming devices and controllers as well as computers, tablets and smartphones allow us to move beyond the action of watching entertainment to “interacting” with it as well. The cameras process the player’s movements, converting motion into a digital image on the screen and “augmenting” or layering the image into a game.

2. Gyroscopes and accelerometers capture motion (acceleration) and orientation (rotation):  Once only available on gaming accessories, now the accelerometers, gyroscopes and sensors featured on mobile gaming devices, tablets, smartphones and tablet PC’s offer digital controls that extend the player’s environment into the gaming experience.  

3. GPS identifies location: If your device is GPS enabled, then apps and games can incorporate location. Just imagine what an augmented reality scavenger hunt could be like when using location information from devices, finding magic coins and swords in a lifelike representation of your own back yard.

What’s next

More advanced technology using touch to get feedback, sound with more dimensions and the addition of more sensory experiences such as smell could make augmented reality toys even more realistic. If they can make an iPhone case smell like candy, just think what playing a virtual game of Candy Land could smell like.

Is it really bad for kids?

Some of my friends are concerned that all this new technology will undermine the time their kids play with “old-fashioned” toys, but I believe it’s all about balance. Interactive fun time involving a screen can coexist nicely with playing outside in fresh air with “real” friends. Families can search out new technology toys that fit with their entertainment philosophy, and parents can experience the games together with their children. These and many other new augmented reality and motion-sensing toys give my kids the ability to have experiences I could only dream of during my youth.

Another concern is the incorporation of augmented reality technology into “shooter” games, and I agree. As popular as these games might be, I’m not a big fan, and don’t look forward to violence being even more realistic.  

Feeling the Force

As a huge teenage fan of the “Star Wars” movies, I dreamed of a wardrobe and hairdo like Princess Leia while really wanting to be a Jedi knight. The new Star Wars Kinect Game brings that goal closer to reality, without all the training from Yoda. Watching my son and his friend steer their pod racers and attend the Jedi Academy with the XBox 360 Kinect translating their body movements into an enveloping experience, I see the new technology fulfilling kids’ dreams. Now, if only I could play the game with that great “hamburger buns over the ears” hairdo. Obi-Wan Kenobi would be so proud.

Guest columnist Beth Blecherman covers family technology at TechMamas.com and @TechMama on Twitter.

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How Google Glasses Could Create ‘Augmented Reality’ by Year’s End

From a technical standpoint, a pair of commercially available, augmented reality glasses by Google are very possible by the end of the year. The display might look pretty good, too. So says Blair MacIntyre, a computer scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who founded the school’s Augmented Environments Lab in 1999. 

Since December, the New York Times’ Bits blog and the blog 9to5Google have gathered reports from unnamed sources that Google is working on a pair of glasses that would present wearers with information about real objects they see in the world around them. Google’s partnership with Zagat, for example, might allow the glasses to show reviews for restaurants where wearers direct their gaze. Perhaps combined with Google Maps, the device could search for nearby landmarks and show walking directions. The glasses will have voice input and output. They will also send data directly to the Internet, which is possible via Wi-Fi, 3G or 4G technology. The news finally hit it big when Bits reported that the glasses would be available by the year’s end, retailing for $250 to $600.

Of course, smartphone applications already let users hold up their phones and see restaurant reviews and nearby subway stops, displayed in bubbles floating on top of a view of the scene. But glasses technology would make the science fiction vision of an enhanced reality seem much more real. 

“I think what gets people excited,” MacIntyre told InnovationNewsDaily, “is they imagine this future where I’m walking down a street and I can just see information on stuff around me.”

Glasses make that more possible because people keep them on and don’t have to stop, take out their phones and run an app before seeing the added info. Glasses allow for serendipity. 

“It’s that idea of stumbling on interesting things as you go through your daily life,” MacIntyre said.

Though Google will not officially comment on the glasses project, MacIntyre thinks it’s “pretty possible” the company could pull them off — with a “pretty nice” display — by the end of the year. Many of the technologies the glasses would use are already up and running in phones now, he said. One additional technology the device will need is an orientation sensor, so it would know where its wearer was looking.

It would also need a way of showing users transparent information bubbles on top of reality. Making those bubbles look good is the biggest challenge, MacIntyre said. The glasses may use a camera to relay the world onto their screen, which is how augmented reality smartphone apps work. There are also more sophisticated optics technologies that can make translucent information bubbles, such as lasers that draw images onto the retina.  

MacIntyre is hopeful that the final product will look and work well because unlike a smaller company, Google has the ability to pour much more money into developing the device than they might expect to initially recoup. In a Feb. 21 post, the Bits blog said Google is not yet thinking about a business model for the glasses. Instead, the company wants to see if consumers like it. 

If the buzz on the Web is any indication, many are curious to see their Google services projected onto real life. As for MacIntyre, he said, “I personally am very excited about the idea of somebody creating an affordable, really functional head-worn display.”

Article provided by Innovation News Daily, a sister site to Latopmag.com.

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Augmented Reality at Toy Fair 2012: The Top Apps, Games and Gadgets

Augmented-reality app-cessories were the name of the game at this year’s Toy Fair–from AppGear’s iPad-based games to Hasbro’s Lazer Tag gun. Here are the top AR products we saw on the showroom floor,

WowWee's AppGear showed off several games that combine the iPad with physical toys. Some of the line's six titles even use the world around you to construct the environment you see on your tablet. For example, in the game Alien Jailbreak, the game will create the aliens' jail on a surface within the iPad camera's field of vision, and if you move the tablet, it will alter the game-scape.

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Toy Fair Day 2 Wrap-up: Augmented Reality and Another Kids’ Tablet

Day two of Toy Fair 2012–and this marks our final day of scouring the showroom floor for the latest and greatest in tech-flavored toys. Though our stay at the Javits Center was short, we saw plenty of promising toys today, from a kiddie tablet to a slew of iPad-friendly app-cessories.

Hasbro has always been a frontrunner in the toy industry, so it's no surprise that the company has some valuable additions to the increasingly popular app-cessories category. The new zAPPed line of games works with an iPad, iPhone or iPod touch, and we got a sneak peek at the upcoming Monopoly version.

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