This weeks lecture was about AR/VR.
AR involves overlaying visual, auditory or other sensory information onto the world in order to enhance one’s experience.
VR is a computer generated simulation of a 3D environment that can be interacted with by a person.
Application Areas:
Healthcare
VR can be used in health care by simulating real life surgeries. This is beneficial to train students/new doctors in the field. Instead of practising on cadavers or watching in on a doctor preforming a surgery, they can themselves participate in VR on a fake body.
Public Transport
AR can be used in public transport to help people navigate around a city. A map can be overlayed on a phone’s camera so they can see exactly where they need to go. AR can show which turns they need to take, how long they still need and what direction they need to walk.
Cars
AR can be used in a virtual heads-up display. Instead of having a physical dashboard, a new AR dashboard can be overlayed on the cars front windshield. Now the user doesn’t need to look down at the cars speed on the dashboard but now directly on the road. In addition, maps can be overlayed on the road so the user knows exactly where they need to drive. Similar to the AR uses for public transport.
Research:
I found this project on Indiegogo, it’s a crowdfunding website where people can put their projects online and others can donate to it to see it come to life. I saw this project and was immediately intrigued.
This project is trying to make AR smart glasses look like normal glasses. I thought this was very interesting, if you look at google glass, it looked like a cyborg/alien technology when on someone’s head. But these glasses look exactly like normal sunglasses. They have nearly the exact same functionality, like a heads-up display, voice recognition, speakers, camera and hands-free calling.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/norm-glasses-normal-looking-ar-smart-glasses#/