Facebook BCIs

Today Facebook revealed it has a team of 60 engineers working on building a brain-computer interface that will let you type with just your mind without invasive implants. The team plans to use optical imaging to scan your brain a hundred times per second to detect you speaking silently in your head, and translate it into text. The goal is to eventually allow people to type at 100 words per minute, 5X faster than typing on a phone, with just your mind.

Eventually, brain-computer interfaces could let people control augmented reality and virtual reality experiences with their mind instead of a screen or controller. They only began working on the brain typing project six months ago, but it now they are collaborating with UC San Francisco, UC Berkeley, Johns Hopkins Medicine, Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

More information:

https://techcrunch.com/2017/04/19/facebook-brain-interface/

Xiaomi's VR Headset

Xiaomi announced its new VR headset called 'Mi VR Play 2' and costs CNY 99 ($14 USD). It is a successor to the original Mi VR Play headset released in 2016. Mi VR Play 2 is an entry-level headset that is attached to a smartphone to deliver VR apps, games, movies, and TV shows.

The new headset comes with improved, cloth-like material that sits comfortably on the face. Xiaomi’s headset will become available for purchase starting April 19 in China. There is no announcement yet if it will be available in US or Europe.

More information:

https://haptic.al/xiaomi-mi-vr-play-2-b42066d0f308

Squid and Octopus Can Edit Their Brain

Octopuses and squid have confirmed their reputation as Earth-bound aliens with the discovery that they can edit their own genetic instructions. Unlike other animals, cephalopods – the family that includes octopuses, squid and cuttlefish – do not obey the commands of their DNA to the letter. Instead, they sometimes interfere with the code as it is being carried by a molecular messenger. This has the effect of diversifying the proteins their cells can produce, leading to some interesting variations. The system may have produced a special kind of evolution based on RNA editing rather than DNA mutations and could be responsible for the complex behaviour and high intelligence seen in cephalopods, some scientists believe. RNA, a close cousin of DNA, is used to transfer software-like instructions from the genes to protein-making machinery in cells.

Scientists discovered that more than 60 per cent of RNA transcripts in the squid brain are re-coded by editing. In other animals, ranging from fruit flies to humans, such re-coding events only occur a fraction of 1 per cent of the time. Similar high levels of RNA editing were identified in three other smart cephalopod species, two octopuses and one cuttlefish. The mechanics of cephalopod RNA editing are still being investigated. When do they turn it on, and under what environmental influences? It could be something as simple as temperature changes or as complicated as experience, a form of memory. Octopuses and other cephalopods have a number of characteristics that have caused experts to compare them with aliens, including instantaneous colour-changing camouflage, blue blood, and an ability to see polarised light.

More information:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2127103-squid-and-octopus-can-edit-and-direct-their-own-brain-genes/

Holographic Fitting Rooms

The HoloLens was used as a creative tool to explore styling different pieces of the collection virtually before purchasing. Clients could mix and match different pieces of the collection on a holographic mannequin, and below is what one of those shoppers would see through the HoloLens.  To capture the pieces, they used a 3D scanner consisting of 64 high resolution DSLR cameras to map out the clothes and the model. Pictofit then provided a virtual fitting room for the users at the show, allowing them to try on the clothes on a virtual version of themselves.  The clothes even adapted to the shoppers' body shapes.

Augmented reality has the power to change how we interact with fashion. From the outfit decision in the morning to buying clothes online, we want to see how we are going to look. We want to be inspired, try different combinations and ask our friends what they think. This use of AR has started at the top of the fashion industry, but its not hard to see how it could easily work its way down to the mainstream. Many people hate shopping solely because they hate trying on clothes, and this technology could eliminate that step completely. AR may still be trying to find its footing with the average consumer, this is definitely one way it could make its way to the masses in the future.

More information:

https://augmented.reality.news/news/holographic-fitting-rooms-are-here-with-hololens-pictofit-0176950/

VR Force Feedback Haptic Glove

VRgluv’s team believed there was a problem in the market due to the fact that the current high-end headsets did not have a touch interface impressive enough to match the HMDs, so they set about coming up with a solution to this problem.

VRgluv features complete hand tracking, variable force feedback, force sensitivity, ergonomics, hardware capability, and software capability. The idea is to enhance everyday life through VR including haptics glove.

More information:

https://www.vrandfun.com/vrgluv-brings-1st-force-feedback-haptic-glove-to-vr/

Video Projector AR

Lightform connects to a video projector to beam images and animations on to surrounding objects, essentially turning any surface into a screen (a technique called projection mapping). It scans the environment using depth sensors to map the shape of objects, then tailors its lighting effects to fit. The idea is to seamlessly merge the virtual world with the physical world, without wearing anything on your face. Initial demos show a coffee shop’s price list materialising on a blank slate, squiggly lines dancing across a store window display, and a cactus undulating with decorative pulses of light.

But eliminating headsets would mean many people can share in an AR experience at once and without special preparation, and removes problems around the comfort, weight and power cables of wearable displays. Projection mapping technology is usually used for large-scale, one-off events. The size of the projection depends on the projector. The mapping is not quite real-time – it takes about a minute to do a scan – and you can’t interact with the projected images, unlike with some systems that use haptic devices or motion tracking to give users the illusion of touching what they see.

More information:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2126430-video-projector-creates-augmented-reality-with-no-bulky-headset/