Augmented reality

Augmented reality is one of the newest innovations in the electronics industry. It superimposes graphics, audio and other sense enhancements from computer screens onto real time environments. Augmented reality goes far beyond the static graphics technology of television where the graphics imposed do not change with the perspective. Augmented reality systems superimpose graphics for every perspective and adjust to every movement of the user's head and eyes.

Development of the needed technology for augmented reality systems, however, is still underway within the laboratories of both universities and high tech companies. It is forecasted that by the end of this decade, the first mass-produced augmented reality systems will hit the market.

Components of Augmented Reality

The three basic components of an augmented reality system are the head-mounted display, tracking system and mobile computer for the hardware. The goal of this new technology is to merge these three components into a highly portable unit much like a combination of a high tech walkman and an ordinary pair or eyeglasses.

The Head-Mounted Display

The head-mounted display used in augmented reality systems will enable the user to view superimposed graphics and text created by the system. As of today, the technology nearest to augmented reality head mounts is one that is being used in virtual reality applications.

There are two basic head mount design concepts that are being researched for augmented reality systems and these are the video see-through systems and optical see-through systems.

The video see-through systems block out the user's view of the outside environment and play the image real time through a camera mounted on the head gear. The main problem with this type of system is the delay in image adjustment whenever the user moves his head.

Optical see-through systems, on the other hand, make use of technology that "paints" the images directly onto the user's retina through rapid movement of the light source. Though this system has its drawbacks, particularly its high price, researchers are confident that this system will be a lot more portable and less inconspicuous for future augmented reality systems.

Tracking and Orientation

Another component of an augmented reality system is its tracking and orientation system. This system pinpoints the user's location in reference to his surroundings and additionally tracks the user's eye and head movements. The complicated procedure of tracking overall location, user movement and adjusting the displayed graphics needed are some of the major hurdles in developing this technology. So far, the best systems developed still presents a lag or a delay between the user's movement and the display of the image.

Portable Computer

Last but not the least; augmented reality systems will need highly mobile computers. As of now, available mobile computers that can be used for this new technology are still not sufficiently powerful to create the needed stereo 3-D graphics. Graphics processing units like the NVidia GPU by Toshiba and ATI mobility 128 16MB-graphics chips are however being integrated into laptops to merge the current computer technology to augmented reality systems.

Applications of Augmented Reality Systems

The potential uses of augmented reality systems in everyday living and in various fields are many. Once available in the market, augmented reality systems will change the way people see and learn from their surroundings. Following are several applications for augmented reality systems.

Gaming and Entertainment

Augmented reality systems can be used to enhance gaming and entertainment. RPG games in the future can be integrated with augmented reality systems to give the user real environments as backdrops for his game and to make the user's senses perceive that he truly is one of the characters in the game. Sports fans will have access to up to date game information and enhancd sports viewing at home.

Education

Augmented reality systems in combination with other technologies such as WiFi could also be used to provide instant information to its users. For educational purposes, augmented reality systems can be used to view a panoramic recreation of a historical event superimposed on its real-time background. Students could use this system to have a deeper understanding on things like the formation of clouds, the structure of the universe and the galaxy, etc. through realistic and easily understandable augmented reality systems simulations.

Security and Defense

The military, particularly the Office of Naval Research and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA, are some of the original pioneers of augmented reality systems. One of the main uses of augmented reality systems to the military is providing field soldiers crucial information about their surroundings as well as friendly troops and enemy movements in their particular area. Augmented reality systems will also play a big role in law enforcing and intelligence agencies. This system will enable police officers to have a complete and detailed view and information about a crime scene, a patrol area, or a suspect line up.

Medicine

Medically, augmented reality systems could be used to give the surgeon a better sensory perception of the patient's body during an operation. This will result in less risky and more efficient surgical operations. The system could also be used in conjunction with other medical equipments such as an x-ray machine or an MRI to instantly give the doctors the information they need to make a medical diagnosis or decision.

Business

The building and construction field will benefit from the easier project management that augmented reality systems will bring. Markers can be placed or attached to a particular object a person is currently working on so that project and site managers can monitor work in progress. In the petroleum and mining industry, it will enable decision makers to make timely decisions. The management can decide about how ore will be mined by merely looking at the superimposition of field data fed by the geological survey team through the augmented reality systems.

Augmented reality systems can be used in almost any field or industry. The novelty of instant information coupled with enhanced perception will ensure that augmented reality systems will play a big role in how people live in the future.

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_____________________________________________________________________

.Future of Computers      .DNA Computers      .Optical Computers 

.Holographic Storage Technology      .Quantum Computers

.Quantum Computing Reaches for True Power    

.Solid State Storage Technologies     .Protonic Memory   

.Molecular switches computers    .Nano-Computing

.Very Long Instruction Word Processors (VLIW)   

.Electronic Digital Paper     .Plastic Displays    

.Roentgen Display Technology    .Augmented reality

_____________________________________________________________________

Roentgen Display Technology

Scientists at IBM Research have developed a new flat-panel display technology that delivers clear, crisp images that are double the resolution of today’s typical desktop displays. The prototype Quad-SXGA 200-pixel-per-inch (ppi) display, code named Roentgen, enables users to see text and images with resolution and fidelity that is virtually indistinguishable from a printed page.

With a screen full of more than 5 million full-color pixels -- almost seven times more than the average desktop -- this new active matrix liquid crystal display (AMLCD), is optimized to produce razor-sharp images.

In addition, each pixel is two times finer than those found on a common cathode-ray tube (CRT) desktop monitor, which are normally between 80 and 100 ppi. As a result, any text character, diagram or image has four times as many pixels as the same item on a CRT monitor, resulting in extremely high-resolution images. For example, a Roentgen image of a complete street map of Manhattan, including every street and avenue name, is readable with the naked eye.

“Ultra-high resolution displays have the potential to greatly increase the usability of vast databases of digital images, including digital libraries, architectural and electronic blueprints, historical archives, and scanned records such as those stored by hospitals or insurance companies,” saidRobert Wisnieff, manager of IBM Research’s Advanced Display Technology Lab. “We also expect that the degree of clarity and crispness offered by the Roentgen prototype to be in high demand for graphic design and electronic publishing applications.”

While IBM has announced no product plans for this technology at this time, it is in active discussions with a number of customers around the world.

Technology Specifications
The Roentgen display, named after the German discoverer of the x-ray, results from a combination of advanced designs and advanced low-cost manufacturing processes.
Key specifications of the Roentgen prototype include:

• 200 ppi, 16.3 inch Active Matrix Liquid Crystal Display diagonal viewing area
• 2560x2048 pixels (5,242,880 full color pixels)
• Subpixels are 42 x 126 microns
• 15,728,640 high-performance amorphous silicon transistors
• 1.64 miles of thin film wiring (low-resistance aluminum alloys)
• Aperture ratio of 27.3 percent
• Backlight power of 44 Watts for a brightness of 230 cd/m2
• The prototype is 21 inches high and 16.5 inches wide; the total depth (including base) is 9.5 inches; the thickness of the display is 2.5 inches
• The display weighs less than 20 pounds, which is less than a third of today’s CRT displays
• The power dissipated is less than half the power used by an 18-inch CRT display
• The display is Quad-SXGA (4 times the resolution of an SXGA)

In addition, the researchers have devised a scaleable graphics adapter architecture, based on off-the-shelf components, capable of handling these types of high image content displays. This architecture is compatible with all current operating systems.Scientists at IBM Research began work on AMLCD in the mid-1980's. An early focus of this work was developing techniques to control yield loss in AMLCDs. The results from this work provided IBM scientists with the insight to create highly complex displays. The Roentgen prototype builds on a previous research milestone, a 10.5 inch diagonal 150 ppi SXGA LCD monitor known as “Monet.”

Read More

_____________________________________________________________________

.Future of Computers      .DNA Computers      .Optical Computers 

.Holographic Storage Technology      .Quantum Computers

.Quantum Computing Reaches for True Power    

.Solid State Storage Technologies     .Protonic Memory   

.Molecular switches computers    .Nano-Computing

.Very Long Instruction Word Processors (VLIW)   

.Electronic Digital Paper     .Plastic Displays    

.Roentgen Display Technology    .Augmented reality

_____________________________________________________________________

Plastic Displays

Polyester may be the material of choice for future flat panel displays. Researchers in the U.S. have recently made breakthroughs in developing thin film transistor displays out of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) - a thin, flexible and rugged plastic that you can bend, roll up, fold, or bend into practically any shape you need.
How do you coax a seemingly inflexible, delicate display to perform such acrobatics? The answer is in the roll to roll technique, a process for manufacturing thin film transistors (TFTs). Conventional TFTs are manufactured onto a rigid glass substrate, but the new technique calls for making the transistors on flexible plastic. In fact plastic displays can be manufactured in much the same way that potato chip bags are produced, in which a giant sheet is spooled onto a machine that prints the packaging and cuts the material into individual chip bags.
In manufacturing displays, the plastic would be spooled through a machine, transistor circuit layers would be deposited onto the material, etching processes would produce patterns to form the pixels, and the display would then be cut to size.
Technical challenges still remain. This type of process of making semiconductors doesn't exist yet. The concept holds promise not only for a new generation of ultralight, flexible displays but also for cost savings. Since manufacturing plants will need to be retooled for the roll to roll process, startup costs will be substantial. But the potential for cost savings in the long run because of cheap plastic and mass production techniques is also significant.
The real technical challenge though, is a matter of heat. In conventional TFT production, temperatures reach up to 350 degrees Celsius, hotter than plastic can withstand without deforming. The Lawrence Livermore group, funded by DARPA's High Definition Systems Project recently built high performance transistors at or below 100 degrees Celsius by using a short burst of light lasting 35 nanoseconds to produce the polycrystalline silicon (polysilicon).
Meanwhile, Philips Semiconductors Lab in Red Hill, Surrey, England, is also making headway in developing plastic displays. Its recipe calls for making polysilicon transistors on plastic by baking the plastic first, so that the heat used in the transistor production process doesn't cause expansion.Although mass production of plastic displays is five years away, they could be used in all sorts of ways. The applications could include notebook and desktop displays, video game machines, and hand held appliances, as well as displays that don't exist now, for example, wrap around simulators, roll up displays, wearable displays sewn into clothing, and paper thin electronic books and newspapers. E Ink, based in Boston, is currently developing an ultrathin electronic book based on plastic technology.

Read More

_____________________________________________________________________

.Future of Computers      .DNA Computers      .Optical Computers 

.Holographic Storage Technology      .Quantum Computers

.Quantum Computing Reaches for True Power    

.Solid State Storage Technologies     .Protonic Memory   

.Molecular switches computers    .Nano-Computing

.Very Long Instruction Word Processors (VLIW)   

.Electronic Digital Paper     .Plastic Displays    

.Roentgen Display Technology    .Augmented reality

_____________________________________________________________________

Electronic Digital Paper

In the mid-1970s Nick Sheridon, a physicist working for the Xerox company, developed a digital paper system consisting of millions of tiny spheres, black on one side and white on the other, sandwiched between two layers of thin plastic. Placing portions of this sandwich in an electric field caused the black sides of the spheres to rotate toward the viewer, "printing" whatever was desired; changing the area affected by the field would change what was printed. However, the complex circuits necessary to control the image were, by necessity, rigid boards. The best "paper" that could be produced using the technology of the day was therefore a sort of electronic clipboard. Sheridon's project was shelved until the mid-1990s, when interest in electronic paper resurged. Xerox revived the Sheridon concept, and today at least two other corporations are working on competing versions of digital paper. The invention of plastic transistors by Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs in 1997 (work which won a Nobel Prize) has made the creation of cheap, flexible screen-driving circuitry feasible for the first time--an essential step away from the rigid circuit boards of the past. In 2000 the first true digital paper was demonstrated publicly by Lucent in collaboration with E Ink, Inc.

Presently, the same challenges are facing electronic paper (e-paper) that plagued early cathode ray tube displays for desktop computers and, later, liquid-crystal displays for laptop computers. Resolution must be greatly improved, costs greatly reduced, and some way of displaying color devised. These goals will probably be achieved soon, however, and when they are, our print culture-all that aspect of our lives which revolves around books, newspapers, and other printed material-is liable to be affected in ways that cannot now be foreseen.

A closely related phenomenon is the advent of the e-book. This term broadly includes any book published in any electronic format. When one downloads the text of a Shakespeare play, say, as has been possible for some years, one is downloading a form of e-book. Commercial publishers, best-selling authors, and textbook publishers are increasingly selling e-books online. However, reading a book on a computer screen has all the disadvantages listed above, and more. Paging back and forth to specific passages is more cumbersome on a screen than in a book, and even the slimmest laptop computer is apt to be heavier and clumsier than a printed book. (It is certainly much more expensive to lose or to spill a milkshake on.) Nor can the specialized handheld devices that have been developed so far to display e-books yet compete, in terms of reader comfort, with the paper book.

E-paper may change all this. In five or ten years one will (if manufacturer's promises come true) be able to purchase anobject that resembles a hardcover book yet can display on its pages any text whatever. Such an e-book would match the readability of a paper book while providing access to a whole collection of texts. If such devices do become affordable, students will no longer need to lug heavy piles of textbooks from place to place, and any book--bestseller, technical work, or public-domain classic--will be available in a reader-friendly medium without a trip to the bookstore or library. Since printing and distribution costs would be greatly reduced in such a system, costs to publishers and therefore to readers might decline. It is no wonder that the e-book has been hailed as the greatest advance in book culture since Gutenberg invented the printing press--even before it is widely available.

As so often in computer affairs, however, one must filter the hype. The desktop computer itself was once thought to herald the "paperless office," a work environment where all codocuments would be handled on video screens; in fact, computers hooked to printers have enabled us to waste more paper than ever. It has been similarly claimed that e-paper and e-books will make paper obsolete. However, putting all one's textual eggs in one digital basket may have disadvantages as well as advantages; the e-book may make it easy to lose an entire personal library at one go. More fundamentally, e-books, being extremely complex electronic devices, are certain to lack the stubborn permanence of paper books. Paper books 100 years old are commonplace, and books hand-written on vellum exist that are over 1000 years old. Paper books that have already been sitting on the shelves for generations are therefore sure to still be sitting there, still ready to "function" when exposed to light and a literate eye, many decades after the e-books of tomorrow, along with all the contents of their digital memories, have vanished into landfills or recycling bins. The future of our print culture will, therefore, probably be a hybrid one: e-books for some purposes, paper books for others.

Paper, one of the oldest information-display technologies, continues to have many advantages over even the most advanced video displays. It is lightweight, thin, and cheap; draws no power and never becomes incompatible with new technologies; can display higher-resolution images than any other medium; may last for centuries; and can be recycled. Video displays are heavy, expensive, draw power, and go to the landfill after a few years of use. Paper can be held at any distance from the body and examined at any angle of view, whereas video terminals require the user to sit at a desk and stare at a fixed distance, causing eyestrain and backstrain. The one great advantage of the video screen is that it can display an endless series of different texts and images. If a material could be developed which had the advantages of both paper and the video display--some form of affordable digital paper--it would find a large market.

In the mid-1970s Nick Sheridon, a physicist working for the Xerox company, developed a digital paper system consisting of millions of tiny spheres, black on one side and white on the other, sandwiched between two layers of thin plastic. Placing portions of this sandwich in an electric field caused the black sides of the spheres to rotate toward the viewer, "printing" whatever was desired; changing the area affected by the field would change what was printed. However, the complex circuits necessary to control the image were, by necessity, rigid boards. The best "paper" that could be produced using the technology of the day was therefore a sort of electronic clipboard. Sheridon's project was shelved until the mid-1990s, when interest in electronic paper resurged. Xerox revived the Sheridon concept, and today at least two other corporations are working on competing versions of digital paper. The invention of plastic transistors by Lucent Technologies' Bell Labs in 1997 (work which won a Nobel Prize) has made the creation of cheap, flexible screen-driving circuitry feasible for the first time--an essential step away from the rigid circuit boards of the past. In 2000 the first true digital paper was demonstrated publicly by Lucent in collaboration with E Ink, Inc.

Presently, the same challenges are facing electronic paper (e-paper) that plagued early cathode ray tube displays for desktop computers and, later, liquid-crystal displays for laptop computers. Resolution must be greatly improved, costs greatly reduced, and some way of displaying color devised. These goals will probably be achieved soon, however, and when they are, our print culture-all that aspect of our lives which revolves around books, newspapers, and other printed material-is liable to be affected in ways that cannot now be foreseen.

A closely related phenomenon is the advent of the e-book. This term broadly includes any book published in any electronic format. When one downloads the text of a Shakespeare play, say, as has been possible for some years, one is downloading a form of e-book. Commercial publishers, best-selling authors, and textbook publishers are increasingly selling e-books online. However, reading a book on computer screen has all the disadvantages listed above, and more. Paging back and forth to specific passages is more cumbersome on a screen than in a book, and even the slimmest laptop computer is apt to be heavier and clumsier than a printed book. (It is certainly much more expensive to lose or to spill a milkshake on.) Nor can the specialized handheld devices that have been developed so far to display e-books yet compete, in terms of reader comfort, with the paper book.

E-paper may change all this. In five or ten years one will (if manufacturer's promises come true) be able to purchase anobject that resembles a hardcover book yet can display on its pages any text whatever. Such an e-book would match the readability of a paper book while providing access to a whole collection of texts. If such devices do become affordable, students will no longer need to lug heavy piles of textbooks from place to place, and any book--bestseller, technical work, or public-domain classic--will be available in a reader-friendly medium without a trip to the bookstore or library. Since printing and distribution costs would be greatly reduced in such a system, costs to publishers and therefore to readers might decline. It is no wonder that the e-book has been hailed as the greatest advance in book culture since Gutenberg invented the printing press--even before it is widely available.

As so often in computer affairs, however, one must filter the hype. The desktop computer itself was once thought to herald the "paperless office," a work environment where all documents would be handled on video screens; in fact, computers hooked to printers have enabled us to waste more paper than ever. It has been similarly claimed that e-paper and e-books will make paper obsolete. However, putting all one's textual eggs in one digital basket may have disadvantages as well as advantages; the e-book may make it easy to lose an entire personal library at one go. More fundamentally, e-books, being extremely complex electronic devices, are certain to lack the stubborn permanence of paper books. Paper books 100 years old are commonplace, and books hand-written on vellum exist that are over 1000 years old. Paper books that have already been sitting on the shelves for generations are therefore sure to still be sitting there, still ready to "function" when exposed to light and a literate eye, many decades after the e-books of tomorrow, along with all the contents of their digital memories, have vanished into landfills or recycling bins. The future of our print culture will, therefore, probably be a hybrid one: e-books for some purposes, paper books for others.

Read More

_____________________________________________________________________

.Future of Computers      .DNA Computers      .Optical Computers 

.Holographic Storage Technology      .Quantum Computers

.Quantum Computing Reaches for True Power    

.Solid State Storage Technologies     .Protonic Memory   

.Molecular switches computers    .Nano-Computing

.Very Long Instruction Word Processors (VLIW)   

.Electronic Digital Paper     .Plastic Displays    

.Roentgen Display Technology    .Augmented reality

_____________________________________________________________________

Very Long Instruction Word Processors (VLIW)

Very long instruction word (VLIW) ideas came from the parallel microcode way back in computing's earliest days and from the first supercomputers such as the Control Data CDC6600 and IBM 360/91. In the 1970s, many attached array processors and dedicated signal processors used VLIW-like wide instructions in ROM to compute fast Fourier transforms and other algorithms.


The first true VLIW machines were mini supercomputers in the early 1980s from three companies: Multiflow, Culler, and Cydrome. They were not a commercial success. Still, the compiler writing experience from these endeavors didn't go to waste, Hewlett Packard bought Multiflow, and now Josh Fisher (ex Mult iflow) and Bob Rau (ex Cy drome) lead HP's VLIW compiler effort. Trace scheduling and software pipelining, pioneered by Fisher and Rau, respectively, are now central pillars of VLIW compiler technology.
The trailblazing Multiflow 7/300 used two integer ALUs, two floating-point ALUs, and a branch unit (all built from multiple chips). Its 256-bit instruction word contained seven 32-bit operation codes. The integer units could each perform two operations per 130-ns cycle (four in all) for a performance of about 30 integer MIPS. You could also combine 7/300s to build 512 bit and 1024 bit wide machines.
Cydrome's pioneering Cydra 5 also used a 256-bit instruction word, with a special mode that executed each instruction as a sequence of six 40-bit operations. Its compilers could therefore generate a mix of parallel and conventional sequential code.
While both those VLIW machines used multiple chips, some regard Intel's i860 as the first single-chip VLIW. It depends on the compiler rather than on the hardware to sequence operations correctly.VLIW isn't solely for CPUs. Holland's Philips Semiconductors, another VLIW innovator, recently launched its VLIW TriMedia digital signal processor chip. TriMedia aims at high end applications such as multimedia PCs, videoconferencing, TV set-top boxes, and digital video cameras. The goal is to be fast enough to eliminate the need for a host CPU and cheap enough at $50 to keep total system cost down.


IBM Page for VLIW: http://www.research.ibm.com/vliw/tree_arch.html

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_____________________________________________________________________

.Future of Computers      .DNA Computers      .Optical Computers 

.Holographic Storage Technology      .Quantum Computers

.Quantum Computing Reaches for True Power    

.Solid State Storage Technologies     .Protonic Memory   

.Molecular switches computers    .Nano-Computing

.Very Long Instruction Word Processors (VLIW)   

.Electronic Digital Paper     .Plastic Displays    

.Roentgen Display Technology    .Augmented reality

_____________________________________________________________________