Elbit has Developed an Augmented Reality Helmet for Tank Commanders

Elbit will unveil next week at Eurosatory the IronVision, the first Helmet Mounted Display (HMS) designed for crewmembers of combat vehicles. Part of the company’s See-Through Armor (STA) architecture, IronVision is a 360-degree panoramic situational awareness system that enables tank and infantry crewmen to ‘see-through’ their vehicle’s armor in real-time, creating a complete and clear visualization of the battlefield, even under close hatches.

IronVision’s 360-degree, high-resolution imagery is projected in full color and zero latency to the wearer’s visor, offering a bright and vivid display of the surroundings in both day and night and all types of weather.

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Microsoft's Hololens got an Update

With VR products such as the HTC Vive, Oculus Rift and Google's new Daydream platform dominating the news in recent weeks, Microsoft wants you to remember that its HoloLens augmented reality headset still has some skin in the game.

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Augmented Reality Company Magic Leap Claims Employees Stole Intellectual Property

Artificial reality startup Magic Leap is accusing two Silicon Valley employees of stealing the closely guarded secrets behind its technological tricks.

The allegations of betrayal and skullduggery surfaced in a lawsuit that Magic Leap filed late Thursday in federal court after the two workers, Gary Bradski and Adrian Kaehler, sued the company for wrongful termination earlier this week. An attorney for Bradski and Kaehler denied the company's allegations.

The legal tussle over intellectual property and stock options highlights the rising stakes in artificial reality as more technology companies bet it will produce the industry's next big breakthroughs.

Since its inception six years ago, Magic Leap has emerged as one of artificial reality's most intriguing startups while raising $1.4 billion from a list of investors that include Google and China's Alibaba Group. The last round of financing completed earlier this year valued the Dania Beach, Florida, company at $4.5 billion, even though it hasn't released a product yet and hasn't even disclosed a timetable for doing so.

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Project Aura: Google Glass, Enterprise Edition

You won't have to wait for Google to reveal the next generation of Glass (aka Project Aura) -- regulators just stepped in on its behalf. A newly published FCC filing shows the previously rumored Enterprise Edition headset, and it's clearly a big improvement over the Explorer model from years earlier. The work-focused eyepiece touts a much slicker (and likely more durable) design with both a larger display prism and a hinge that lets you fold it up for travel. The test photos also reveal a spot for a magnetic battery attachment and what looks to be a speedier Atom processor.

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Augmented Reality Predicted to Have as Immense Societal Impact as the Internet did

Augmented reality is the enhancement of human perception through overlaying technologies that can expand, annotate and even record the user's moment-to-moment experience.

Those designing coming augmented reality systems should make them adaptable to change, resistant to hacking and responsive to the needs of diverse users, according to a white paper by an interdisciplinary group of researchers at the University of Washington's Tech Policy Lab.

Though still in its relative infancy, augmented reality promises systems that can aid people with mobility or other limitations, providing real-time information about their immediate environment as well as hands-free obstacle avoidance, language translation, instruction and much more. From enhanced eyewear like Google Glass to Microsoft's wearable HoloLens system, tech, gaming and advertisement industries are already investing in and deploying augmented reality devices and systems.

But augmented reality will also bring challenges for law, public policy and privacy, especially pertaining to how information is collected and displayed. Issues regarding surveillance and privacy, free speech, safety, intellectual property and distraction -- as well as potential discrimination -- are bound to follow.

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Magic Leap is Still a Leap of Faith

If this is real, its pretty amazing.  Why do I say 'if?'  Largely because we are seeing images, sure, but there's no sign whatsoever of the hardware associated with it.  With Microsoft's Hololens, you see what is being used.  With Magic Leap?  let's just say at this point its a leap of faith.  It may be ML will work better, but if they are too far behind MS, then you can have the betamax vs VHS situation all overagain.  (look it up kids).    It won't matter if Google is baking it.  Google has failed to beat other companies that beat them into a space (Facebook, for example).

Hololens News: Dev Kit and Demo

Microsoft showed off a basic game Project X Ray," it has been developing for its Hololens system.  It gives some ideas on what could be done.  LARPing looks like it could get really interesting.

The developer kit is going to cost $3,000.

eh? Prior Art Where art Thou? Google Patents Hologram Enabled Glasses

Google Glass may have dropped off the radar, but Google is still hard at work on the project behind closed doors. The tech giant has recently filed for a new patent that enables the wearable head-gear to display holographic projections.

Instead of the flat display beamed into the wearer’s eye with the current generation, the new patent would allow for a device to overlay CGI on top of the real world, to create a three dimensional heads up display. This technology would open up Google Glass as an augmented reality platform, offering something a little closer to Microsoft’s Holo Lens. The new design also apparently allows for a wilder field of view, is more efficient and easier to wear.

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I have to wonder how Hololens works with this patent.  Microsoft has been working on this for at least seven years.

US Marine Corps Exploring Uses of Augmented Reality

Think of it as Google Glass goes to war — only less nerd and more Marine. Budget cuts and readiness shortfalls have the US military looking at virtual reality as a partial replacement for expensive field exercises. But VR has real limits. So this month, young Marines at the Infantry Officer Course in Quantico tested a technology to get the best of both worlds: augmented reality.

While virtual reality puts the user in a completely computer-generated environment, augmented reality superimposes computer-generated elements — say, a tank, a helicopter, or a building — on the real world. That lets troops go through the actual, physical motions of the skill they’re training for and build muscle memory, without restricting the targets and support units.

Google Glass and football broadcasts already use a limited form of augmented reality, superimposing static elements like a yellow first-down line on the footage of the actual game. Military training requirements are much more complex. Ground combat is a team sport, so different users in different places need to see the same computer-generated component — and the perspective has to change realistically as the users move around. The computer-generated components themselves need to move and interact, for example by blowing up.

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Magic Leap's Much Hyped Augmented Reality Trailer

Magic Leap CEO: Microsoft HoloLens Augmented Reality UnHealthy!

Microsoft's recently announced futuristic holographic headset may pose a health risk to users, according to the CEO of Magic Leap, a secretive augmented-reality startup and newfound rival to Microsoft in the burgeoning AR space.

Microsoft's HoloLens uses an input system that does not fully replicate the physical connections between our eyes and our brains, possibly resulting in permanent effects on your brain, Magic Leap CEO Rony Abovitz wrote Tuesday in a Reddit AskMeAnything thread when asked about the device. As such, Abovitz recommended avoiding use of the headset and others like it.

"There are a class of devices (see-through and non-see-through) called stereoscopic 3D. We at Magic Leap believe these inputs into the eye-brain system are incorrect -- and can cause a spectrum of temporary and/or permanent neurologic deficits," Abovitz wrote, when asked how his company's technology compares to the HoloLens.

"I personally experienced a number of these stereoscopic-3D issues -- and would not wear these devices -- especially knowing that digital light-field systems are on the way and safe," he added.

Abovitz, of course, has a horse in the race. Magic Leap, which was virtually unknown until October, is designing its very own so-called augmented reality system that will create 3D objects and overlay them onto a standard scene, like in the palm of your hand or around your living room. Though, Abovitz says that his company's device will use "digital light-field signal technology that respects the biology of the human eye-brain system in a profound and safe way." Magic Leap has scooped up almost $600 million in funding, with Google leading the charge.

Microsoft, meanwhile, became the unlikely face of AR in January when it showed its HoloLens headset and impressed journalists (myself included) with full-blown demos that felt reasonably close to the envisioned final product. The HoloLens appears to work similarly to Magic Leap's technology by blending artificial light with the light your eyes receive from the real world, mashing the two scenes into one and creating life-like 3D objects and environments at scale.

Yet there is a dispute whether Microsoft's HoloLens is functioning the same as Magic Leap's purported technology. Magic Leap has refused to show off its device, and neither company has fully expressed how its devices generate 3D images -- be it through light blasted directly on to your eyes, a visor with projector-like technique or a full display in an enclosed headset.

The distinction is key to Abovitz's accusation, though Microsoft declined to explain whether his description of HoloLens was accurate. Instead, a Microsoft spokesperson said to look to its annual Build developers conference in April, "where we will share more details." Alex Kipman, who heads up the HoloLens project at Microsoft, notably name-dropped Magic Leap at the January 21 unveiling of the HoloLens, saying Microsoft was open to collaborating with others on the technology. Abovitz said Tuesday his company "had other plans."

The lack of information about such products, especially so with Magic Leap and its insistence on secrecy, has created an aura of mystery around AR and VR unrivaled in the tech industry. How these devices function, what they're actually doing to our eyes and our brains and what, if any, are the side effects remain open questions.

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Microsoft Hololens

     

   

Wired's review.

An easy to use developer toolkit is really, really key.  Otherwise this will be another Google Glass.

Is Magic Leap the Ultimate in Augmented Reality?

Osterhout Design's New X6 Augmented Reality Occulars for the US Military

Getting secret information to specific people, like the location of the nearest nuclear power plant, in a way that doesn’t draw attention from outside is a classic spy problem. Another one is giving agents the ability to match names to faces in the real world, at blackjack tables and fancy soirees and other places spies frequent. The Defense Department is buying some new spy specs to give spooks in the field an intelligence edge over everybody else.

The glasses, called simply the X6, are from San Francisco-based Osterhout Design Group. They look like the lovechild of Google Glass and the Oculus Rift, providing more information to the wearer than the small window on Google’s much-maligned headset but not obstructing vision like the Oculus Rift. (Admittedly, for spy glasses, they lack a certain subtlety.)

At a recent innovation symposium at Defense Intelligence Agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., Bobby King, vice president of special projects for Osterhout, demonstrated how the headset provides situational intelligence. Defense One looked through the glasses at a static, two-dimensional map and suddenly structures appeared in three dimensions related to objects of interest. King confirmed that the map was just a regular print of a satellite photograph. With that particular app, the glasses send information to a server that then processes the image against others to determine the location depicted. The glasses then present data from the database visually in the form of structures, special instructions, clues, etc. The view was smarter and more useful than what you would see with Google Glass, but didn’t get in the way of the user’s ability to actually see, like a clunky virtual reality headset.

“Augmented reality is the fusion of data and your real environment. We’re looking for an immersive feeling, but not virtual,” King said.

Cool map data aren’t the only secret messages you can receive on the X6.

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Will this get bought by Google too?  half smiley there.

Augmented Reality in Sports

Norway Tests Oculus Rift to Control Tanks Through Augmented Reality

As it usually happens, video games are designed to mimic real-world fighting. Now it seems the model's being flipped on its head—the battlefield, for better or worse, is bearing an increasing resemblance to a game.

Look at Norway, where the Army has started using Oculus Rift to drive tanks with increased visibility, according to the Norwegian TV station tu.no. Four VR cameras are mounted on the sides of the tank to give the soldier inside donning the headset a full 360 degree view of what's going on outside, like X-ray vision.

Using cameras to "see through" a vehicle isn't a new concept; when the hatches are down tanks are notoriously hard to navigate. But the Oculus Rift dev kit is just a fraction of the price of traditional 360-degree camera equipment: Lockheed Martin's F-35 helmet for pilots can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

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Taiwanese Group Creates "Minority Report" Rival for Google Glass

write up on the other side of this link.