Tag: Augmented reality

Pentagon will test 5G for virtual reality missions

Post author By Alan Boyle
Post date October 8, 2020
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The Department of Defense is funding an effort to use 5G with augmented reality and virtual reality. (U.S. Army Photo)

Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state is participating in a $600 million Pentagon program to test the use of 5G connectivity for high-tech applications.

JBLM’s piece of the program will focus on 5G-enabled applications that make use of augmented reality and virtual reality for mission planning, training and operations, the Department of Defense said today. The other sites involved in the experimentation and testing program are Hill Air Force Base in Utah, Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany in Georgia, Naval Base San Diego in California, and Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

“Through these test sites, the department is leveraging its unique authorities to pursue bold innovation at a scale and scope unmatched anywhere else in the world,” Michael Kratsios, acting under secretary of defense for research and engineering, said in a news release.

JBLM’s AR/VR project will also involve the U.S. Army’s Yakima Training Center in central Washington state.

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Tags 5G, Augmented reality, Military, Science, Technology, Virtual Reality

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XR experts see health care as the killer app

Post author By Alan Boyle
Post date March 3, 2020
No Comments on XR experts see health care as the killer app

Augmented-reality surgery — Philips’ Azurion augmented-reality platform makes use of Microsoft’s HoloLens headsets to guide surgeons through an operation. (Philips Illustration)

Virtual reality? Augmented reality? Mixed reality? Today at a Seattle symposium, experts settled on extended reality, or XR, as the catch-all term for devices that put computer-generated visuals in front of your face. And they settled on health care as one of the most promising frontiers for XR.

“I believe health care is going to drive the mass adoption of XR,” Vinay Narayan, vice president of platform strategy and developer community at HTC Vive, said at XR Day, an event presented by the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering.

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Tags Augmented reality, Technology, University of Washington, Virtual Reality

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Mixed reality takes you on an expedition to Titan

Post author By Alan Boyle
Post date November 27, 2019
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GeekWire’s Alan Boyle (foreground) and University of Washington planetary scientist Baptiste Journaux take a thrill ride through an ice volcano, courtesy of Expedition Titan, a mixed-reality experience at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center. (GeekWire Photo / Kevin Lisota)

It’s doubtful anyone alive today will get to ride through the ice volcanoes of Saturn’s largest moon — but you can do the next best thing at Seattle’s Pacific Science Center, thanks to a mixed-reality experience called Expedition Titan.

The walk-through production is the latest showcase for Hyperspace XR, a startup-in-residence that’s pioneering the frontiers of mixed reality at the science center.

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Tags Augmented reality, Hyperspace XR, Pacific Science Center, Space, Technology, Virtual Reality

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How ‘avatars’ will let you travel virtually

Post author By Alan Boyle
Post date October 10, 2019
No Comments on How ‘avatars’ will let you travel virtually

When it was time for Kevin Kajitani to put his ideas for traveling through telepresence to the test, he chose a familiar experimental subject: his son.

Kajitani — the co-director of the Avatar division at ANA Holdings, the parent company of Japan’s biggest airline — set up a mobile Beam robot at his home north of Tokyo, crept into a closet, and rolled the robot out to greet his 2-year-old son Aoi with his face looking out from the video screen.

“The first time I approached my son with the avatar, he said, ‘Papa!’ And we started playing,” Kajitani said Oct. 9 at a lunch talk sponsored by ANA at the GeekWire Summit in Seattle.

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Tags ANA, Augmented reality, GeekWire Summit, Technology, Telepresence, Virtual Reality

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Amazon lays out a way to guide deliveries with AR

Post author By Alan Boyle
Post date August 6, 2019
No Comments on Amazon lays out a way to guide deliveries with AR

Augmented reality for deliveries — A schematic shows how information about a delivery drop-off location might be overlaid on the display of an augmented-reality headset. (Amazon Illustration via USPTO)

Efficient package delivery is one of the keystones of Amazon’s retailing business, and a newly issued patent opens up a new frontier in efficiency: augmented reality.

The patent, published today, outlines a scheme for alerting a delivery agent about the best times to make a delivery, the best routes to take and even the best places for parking — all overlaid on the agent’s AR headset.

Why do it, in this age of navigation apps?

“Experienced delivery agents often learn information about the delivery routes and delivery areas that is not reflected in a delivery route generated by a routing application,” Amazon inventor Robert Niewiadomski writes in his application, filed back in 2016.

Such lore can include gate codes, the precise location of the preferred delivery entrance and “the most efficient or best places to park when making a delivery to a destination or a group of destinations,” Niewiadomski notes.

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Tags Amazon, Augmented reality, Patents, Technology

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How VR can make things go better in the real world

Post author By Alan Boyle
Post date October 22, 2018
No Comments on How VR can make things go better in the real world

VR anatomy — Freelance science writer Berly McCoy uses a VR headset and controller to manipulate a virtual human brain at the Maryland Blended Reality Center. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Can being in the middle of an opera take your mind off pain?

Here at the University of Maryland, scientists are studying the therapeutic value of experiencing a virtual-reality recording of Francis Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites.” The hope is that, at least in some situations, the distraction of an immersive virtual experience can provide pain relief without having to turn to opioids.

“The pathways through which we receive pain are the same pathways through which distraction travels,” computer scientist Amitabh Varshney told journalists last week during a tour of the university’s Maryland Blended Reality Center.

To see whether the idea could work, a research team recorded a performance of “Dialogues” in VR from three vantage points, including a 360-degree camera mounted right on the stage. Headset-wearing users can switch between the vantage points to experience the opera as if they were watching from the orchestra pit or standing in the midst of the action. The experience can be far more powerful than merely listening to audio or watching a video.

“We are working to see how far we can take this,” Varshney said.

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Tags Augmented reality, Science, ScienceWriters, Technology, Virtual Reality

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AI experts turn soccer videos into ‘holograms’

Post author By Alan Boyle
Post date June 18, 2018
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Computer scientists have trained a neural network to transform the action from pre-recorded videos of soccer games into immersive augmented-reality “holograms” you can shrink down onto a tabletop.

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Tags Artificial Intelligence, Augmented reality, HoloLens, Soccer, Sports, Technology, University of Washington, World Cup

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Blended-reality mirror shows off virtual clothes

Post author By Alan Boyle
Post date January 2, 2018
No Comments on Blended-reality mirror shows off virtual clothes

A diagram shows how Amazon’s blended-reality mirror could put an observer into a virtual scene. (Amazon Illustration via USPTO)

How would that glitzy cocktail dress look on you when you’re on the dance floor at the GeekWire Gala? Now Amazon has a patented technology for that: a blended-reality display that puts your image into a virtual scene, and puts you in a virtual version of the dress.

The magic mirror would be a step up from Amazon’s Echo Look camera, which is currently being marketed on an invitation-only basis as a fashion “style assistant.”

Echo Look lets you take your picture with the assistance of Amazon’s voice-commanded Alexa AI assistant, and then produces blended-reality photos that show you wearing the clothes you’ve picked out.

The blended-reality display, described in a patent published today, relies on a system of cameras, projectors, displays, mirrors and lights that can add layers of pixels to your moving image on a real-time basis.

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Tags Amazon, Augmented reality, Fashion, Patents, Technology

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Augmented-reality shopping on your phone?

Post author By Alan Boyle
Post date July 25, 2017
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An augmented-reality shopping app could provide a realistic-looking view of a virtual wristwatch on your smartphone, complete with bling. (GeekWire Photoillustration / Alan Boyle)

It’s no secret that Amazon is intrigued by the potential applications of augmented reality for e-commerce – and one of those applications is explored in a newly published patent.

Imagine that you’re shopping online for a classy watch or bracelet, and you want to get a sense for how it’ll look around your wrist. Just point your smartphone camera at your hand, and an augmented-reality app will show you the item superimposed on the camera video.

But what about the bling? The patent published today, based on an application filed back in 2013, focuses on how to add the sparkle to the virtual image of the bracelet.

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