VR Headsets Are Approaching the Eye’s Resolution Limits

Developers of micro-OLED and micro-LED displays for AR/VR headsets are focused on achieving higher pixel densities for greater resolution. Higher pixel densities would make visuals appear more lifelike and allow for more compact displays that reach the human resolution bar, at which a person with 20/20 vision no longer perceives any improvement.

Mojo Vision, a leader in micro-LED displays, recently demonstrated a full-color Micro-LED display frontplane with a density of 5,510 pixels per centimeter (14,000 pixels per inch). Apple’s Vision Pro, which has two displays packing over 23 million pixels. Varjo’s XR4 has two 3,840 x 3,744 displays and Pimax, is working on a headset with two 6K QLED mini-LED displays.

More information:

https://spectrum.ieee.org/virtual-reality-head-set-8k

Camera Captures 156.3 Trillion FPS

Scientists have created a blazing-fast scientific camera that shoots images at an encoding rate of 156.3 terahertz (THz) to individual pixels - equivalent to 156.3 trillion frames per second. Dubbed SCARF (swept-coded aperture real-time femtophotography), the research-grade camera could lead to breakthroughs in fields studying micro-events that come and go too quickly for today’s most expensive scientific sensors.

SCARF has successfully captured ultrafast events like absorption in a semiconductor and the demagnetization of a metal alloy. The research could open new frontiers in areas as diverse as shock wave mechanics or developing more effective medicine. Although SCARF is focused more on research than consumers, the team is already working with two companies to develop commercial versions, presumably for peers at other higher learning or scientific institutions.

More information:

https://www.engadget.com/this-camera-captures-1563-trillion-frames-per-second-184651322.html

Common Sense Robots

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers are developing software for household robots that uses large language models (LLM) to help them acquire common sense. They believe integrating LLM could help plug this gap, making such robots more useful in the real world. Including robot motion data with LLMs should give such robots common sense knowledge.

MIT’s new technique allows a robot to break down various household tasks into smaller sub-tasks and adapt to any disruptions within a sub-task. This enables the robot to continue a task without starting from the beginning or requiring engineers to manually program solutions for every possible failure.

More information:

https://interestingengineering.com/innovation/household-robots-common-sense

3D Reconstructions of Museum Animals

The openVertebrate (oVert) project involved 18 institutions over the past five years creating 3D reconstructions of museum specimens, which are now available freely online. The animals on display behind glass at the museum are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to museum collections, which contain thousands of specimens that have been collected and carefully preserved over the decades.

But the physical limits to accessing these specimens have always hindered scientific collaboration and education. Already, the process of scanning specimens has given scientists new perspectives on subjects they've been studying for years. While scanning spiny mice for the project, researchers noticed their tails were covered in internal bony plates called osteoderms, previously thought to be unique to armadillos.

More information:

https://www.sciencealert.com/stunning-tool-lets-you-digitally-dissect-museum-animals-with-x-ray-vision