Holographic headsets are a central theme to augmented reality (AR) today, but the recent AR in Action Conference demonstrated the diversity of the field and the potential to include many more technologies to augment humans.
TheAR in ActionConference, held at the MIT Media Lab, expanded the definition of AR through a TED conference-like lens, delivering 70 diverse curated talks and 32 panels over two days to over 1,000 experts and practitioners in the field.
As Chris Croteau, general manager of Intel’s Wearable Device Group, said:
“AR的自由主义定义专注于数据的方式向用户提供以及它们与其互动。AR平台作为全息投影系统的流行定义，如漏洞，元和ODG耳机限制AR可以。“
这些全息投影耳机的价值在哈佛大学医学院教授Jayender Jagadeesan讲述了关于外科AR应用的谈话，以及由战斗战斗机飞行员Patrick Guinee谈到提升360度的观点飞行员通过他的身体俯视，脚下的机身看看下面的对手。
“The conference widened my myopic aperture to the universal possibilities,” said Guinee, who has 25 years of experience with holographic AR military applications.
He pointed out that AR can be visual, fitting the popular paradigm of holographic projections overlayed onto reality using a headset. But in its essence, it is the overlay of a data sources impacting human perception. It is not necessarily visual, but it could be sound or haptic perception of interactions with electromechanical stimulus, though this is still somewhat limiting to the definition of this emerging field.
Digitally augmented humans
AR can also change human perception of the surrounding space when a digitally augmented human interacts with a data source, such digitally enhanced senses or accumulated data from surrounding IoT infrastructure.
Juan Enriquez, genomic and life sciences visionary, writer and frequent TED conference speaker, and Carl Byers, chief strategy officer of Contextere, explained the seemingly infinite possibilities of overlayed data and augmented perception and enhanced human capability that defines AR.
Enriquez said:
“AR的潜力让我想起了互联网的早期定义：成千上万的人松散地连接。几十年来，AR是一种类似的网络效果，即通过从生物传感器，磨损传感器和周围的空间获得的互连数据增加了人们的认知能力和感知。“
Byers说：
“谈判加强了我对AR的看法作为更广泛的概念。它是一套延长人类能力和使用各种行业和应用方法的方法的技术套件。“
Pattie Maes，MIT Media Labs流体接口组负责人，包裹的AR在多学科解释AR设计和开发辅助技术用户界面和与用户的思维，身体和行为的交互的演变。
The talk about the evolution from human to cyborg made a striking point about disabilities becoming augmented abilities with the example of double leg amputee Hugh Herr, an MIT professor of biometrics who has created breakthrough bionic limbs that enhance human mobility—like the blades Olympic runner Oscar Pistorius wears. The line between disability begins with augmentation, which at this point in time may only partially remedy disability but—like Pistorius’ legs—could in the future exceed normal human capabilities to interact with the surrounding space. We could have bionic eyes that exceed human vision and augmented cognition with which everything is remembered and everything in the environment is contextually understood.
Metasensory augmentation
Perhaps the term metasensory augmentation—from the father of wearables dating to the 1980s,史蒂夫曼—might replace the term AR. Mann talked about emitted energy transduced into visual applications and the brain-computer interface. Mann also added emphasis to the history of wearables.
Other speakers gave balance to the conference’s enthusiasm, including Monique Morrow, co-chair of the IEEE Global Initiative on Ethical Considerations for Mixed Reality Committee. She describes herself as the elephant in the room who is both excited about the possibilities of AR and wary of the potential for abuse. She is concerned with ethical considerations in an AR world driven by intelligent systems observing behaviors and sensing physical phenomena continuously to provide individuals with appropriate content. Could inequities arise if monopolies such as Facebook and Google emerge that monetize this data? What are the ethical surveillance considerations?
Enriquez and Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe also said a killer AR app has not emerged, unless the definition is stretched to include Pokémon Go. And Croteau explained that systems designers do not yet have all the tools and components to build light, unobtrusive and highly functional AR wearables with good battery life that he equated to the early smartphones. But AR applications are being developed to solve a broad range of problems in fields such as emergency response, architecture and the Internet of Things.
Metcalfe在总结会议时将他的多年经验作为发明家，企业家和顾问/发明家应用：
“AR技术正处于发生的边缘。会议的时间符合AR的发展阶段，因为有时这样，人们会聚在一起，为行业提供一个方向的向量，至少有一段时间。“
五十个视频将很快发布到会议网站。读者对学习的更多应检查会议网站：arinaction.org.