ZeroAccuracy
03-22-08, 07:30 AM
Today, a handful of soldiers with advanced gear can see a few digital maps, through helmet-mounted monocles. Some pilots can get data about their world, on heads-up displays. But one day, troops could see an info-"augmented" reality all around them, with contact lenses that provide "first-person shooter-type video game" environments to those that wear them. At least, that's the idea behind the latest project from DARPA, the Pentagon's blue sky science and technology division.
http://blog.wired.com/defense/images/2008/03/20/bionicwomaneye_2.jpg
The agency's Information Processing Techniques Office announced Wednesday that it's looking for information on "the creation of micro- and nano-scale display technologies for the purpose of creating displays that could be worn as transparent contact lenses." And not in some far-off future. But in "three to five years."
A limiting factor to untethered, augmented and/or mixed reality applications is the bulkiness, power consumption, cost, limited resolution and limited field of view of head-mounted displays. DARPA seeks to leap beyond incremental, evolutionary enhancement of head-mounted display technologies to a see-through contact lens on which images can be displayed. This information might be command-and-control information, not unlike information provided to players of first-person, shooter-type videogames or synthetic entities and effects in a live training environment.
But all kinds of questions remain -- from manufacturing to power to wireless data transfer. Even basics, like which display technologies would be used, remain. Maybe lasers, DARPA suggests. Maybe light-emitting diodes. Or maybe something else entirely will give troops this videogame vision.
The materials behind real-life invisibility cloaks could even factor in, sorta. DARPA is talking about spending $3 million next year on "transparent displays" -- and you'd certainly want your Halo 3-esque contacts to be transparent. The key to those displays would be "metamaterials," the strange substances that can bend certain frequencies of light around them.
SOURCE (http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/03/darpa-wants-con.html)
http://blog.wired.com/defense/images/2008/03/20/bionicwomaneye_2.jpg
The agency's Information Processing Techniques Office announced Wednesday that it's looking for information on "the creation of micro- and nano-scale display technologies for the purpose of creating displays that could be worn as transparent contact lenses." And not in some far-off future. But in "three to five years."
A limiting factor to untethered, augmented and/or mixed reality applications is the bulkiness, power consumption, cost, limited resolution and limited field of view of head-mounted displays. DARPA seeks to leap beyond incremental, evolutionary enhancement of head-mounted display technologies to a see-through contact lens on which images can be displayed. This information might be command-and-control information, not unlike information provided to players of first-person, shooter-type videogames or synthetic entities and effects in a live training environment.
But all kinds of questions remain -- from manufacturing to power to wireless data transfer. Even basics, like which display technologies would be used, remain. Maybe lasers, DARPA suggests. Maybe light-emitting diodes. Or maybe something else entirely will give troops this videogame vision.
The materials behind real-life invisibility cloaks could even factor in, sorta. DARPA is talking about spending $3 million next year on "transparent displays" -- and you'd certainly want your Halo 3-esque contacts to be transparent. The key to those displays would be "metamaterials," the strange substances that can bend certain frequencies of light around them.
SOURCE (http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/03/darpa-wants-con.html)