Every new technology, as well as every old technology, can be used for "good" or for "evil." More broadly, many activities to which "goodness" can be assigned will vary in "goodness" based on the context (in many ethical systems).
The first thing I imagined is a wearable with a clicker for the blind. You say navigate me to ___, and the clicker gives you hot and cold signals (lots of feedback vs. less) as well as maybe a buzzing feedback if you're approaching a hazard.
As long as it's in the phone, couldn't you tether it to Google Glass to generate a real-time HUD based on where you were? (and perhaps also capture images to attach to the 3D model)
That was the first thing I thought about - actual augmented reality down to the inch would be quite something.
With future versions of Google Glass perhaps. The current version does not have a display that can provide a HUD in the way that it seems you are thinking.
I'm looking forward to the first first-person shooter built on Tango. E.g. a ghostbusters game in which you walk around in your own house, the ghosts only being visible through your Tango.
How about tactical coordination and mapping for teams (i.e. paintball / special operations)? I'm picturing the HUD 'map' from every FPS game, except it is based on the current view and relative locations of the team's devices.
How about a HUD that projects a map onto a firefighter's SCBA facepice?
That would be absolutely incredible... Firefighters die every year because they get disoriented and lost in zero-visibility conditions. Even if it didn't have a pre-generated map of the structure loaded... it could build a map as it went, and at least be able to provide a 'retrace my steps' view.
I wonder at what point ITAR kicks in for that sort of firefighter equipment. I know traditional night-vision is covered, and I can certainly see "smoke-vision" having straightforward military applications.
This is an issue with current firefighting technology. Thermal imaging cameras are quite common in the fire service. Most manufacturers limit the frame rate of the camera to 9fps or less, as this falls beneath the 'fast camera' spec for ITAR.
This just adds a depth camera to the phone and uses it and the visible light camera to map the space and orient the device. If a human is disoriented in a no-visibility situation due to smoke, the cameras will not likely be able to orient them either, except maybe something like a power outage, where visible light is unavailable but the depth camera can still function.
In the case that a new image couldn't be mapped, the phone could still use its gyros to determine orientation and provide a route out along the mapping that it had made during ingress. A first-person-shooter-style "this way to the next waypoint" arrow, or something like that, could provide directional cues in low/no visibility situations.
It could also be networked with other devices, such that all of the routes mapped could be composited and help in the identification of alternative routes should one become blocked.
Imagine combining this with an Oculus Rift, so that you can make your house look however you want within the level, and you can move around through this new world. It would take virtual reality to an entirely new level
Instead consider you won't see the actual items in the room. Polygon shapes will replace "real-space" items (coffee table, sofa, bed, doors) but can be dungeon items (for D&D) or items in an evil corporate waiting room (a la Mission Impossible or Metal Gear).
Imagine combining this with an Oculus Rift, so that you can make your house look however you want within the level, and you can move around through this new world. It would take virtual reality to an entirely new level
Imagine combining this with an Oculus Rift, so that you can make your house look however you want within the level, and you can move around through this new world. It would take virtual reality to an entirely new level
Its future offspring could be the pinnacle of AR (Augmented Reality), add data as an overlay to the existing world, but in such a way that depth and perspective is preserved. In your case, seeing Stay Puft peek through my bedroom window would probably unleash a very real sensation.
Yes, mapping geometry/mesh to real world structures/skylines/halls/rooms of real locations, geolocation, orientation of device and local structural data. That is when augmented reality really takes over. We may even see a time when looking at something without some sort of augmented view is strange. Tango seems to be going right at that.
Personally I cannot wait to be chased by Cloverfield like monsters/creatures along the skyline and weaving in between buildings downtown. Movie ads are going to be amazing.
Yeah it could be used for that, though I'm not sure why Google Glass would be used in that situation. A chest strap to mount the device looking forward and maybe headphones in the blind user's ears (to speak out TTS directions, or even just tones which represent directions) would be a better feedback mechanism.
I agree. I suppose a Google Glass would be a bit silly since the screen would be unused, but seeing as it has most of the technology built in already, it would be easier to get a prototype working. An ear piece is another bonus added to the device as it could notify the user of obstacles.
I still like that Occipital is planning to ship a standalone unit, and support people wanting to 3D print various housings.
I guess the positive interpretation is that crowdfunding seems to be putting some pressure on larger companies to go public with research projects earlier than they normally would.
I wonder if it uses the machine vision aspect to prevent the typical problem of accelerometer drift. e.g. by orienting itself relative to walls/other stationary things.
Also, imagine making a 3D "scanner" that you can scan objects with into a virtual world, or print out on a 3D printer.
Accelerometers usually don't have significant drift - digital gyroscopes do. The acceleromters are quite noisy though (and measure both gravity and acceleration). From some of the brief images in the intro movie it looks like the cameras are doing tracking and alignment of "interesting" features. Things like that fall into the Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) technology area. Very cool stuff.
Do you mean the accelerometer values drifted over time (i.e. the direction of gravity shifted on a stable accelerometer) or do you mean the value when doubly integrated drifted?
"Unfortunately, due to FCC restrictions, we can only send development units to incorporated entities or institutions at this time."
That's a bummer.
Also, the page's default background-color should be set to black (or something dark). Most of the text is white(ish) and with a slow connection the background images take a while to load, making it impossible to read while you wait. /rant
This is a little creepy actually when you think about it. Here is this amazing new technology and the government says that only corporations are allowed to possess it. I'm sure that there are reasons but on the face of it I feel like it is right out of a cyberpunk book.
It's probably because sending to a company can fit under testing purposes but going to a person needs to be more rigorously controlled for interference and the like. Still, an unfortunate and old fashioned restriction in today's culture.
That just indicates that it hasn't passed Class B certification yet (under Title 47 CFR Part 15), which basically means that as an unintentional RF radiator (that is, at least in part not an intentional radiocommunication device), it hasn't yet been shown not to interfere with other devices. Even the wall wart for charging your phone needs to meet Class B in order to be sold or supplied for household use.
interesting that they built this into a phone. but i guess once you need a mobile computing device with a screen and a camera you end up with a "phone" nowadays.
the reliance on lenses is a hinderance though as it has two and holding it without covering them both requires user effort. you can see it at the end of their video where a finger is partially over the second lens.
Here's the best idea I can think of with this technology.
Imagine taking a scan of your pantry, refrigerator, and/or laundry room. Then mark everything as what it is (e.g. "box of cheez-its", "milk", etc). Then come back a few days and do the scan again and it'll tell you what's missing. Once you return from shopping, scan again saying what the new items are (even if they aren't what was there). The software would probably need to recognize certain shapes so a slight rearrangement/movement doesn't change. It'd be like history/bookmarks/favorites for perishables!
Isn't it much easier to just look into your refrigerator/pantry and keep a mental track of things? There are a few pitfalls to your suggested method:
* It takes a good amount of time scanning and cataloging everything and we are taking about a world where people don't find enough time to scribble down these things on a piece of paper.
* What if you pulled out cereal box A and cereal box B but switched places when putting them back?
* Since its scanning the boundary of objects, it won't be able to tell you if your Milk is empty, half empty or full.
The one thing I could think of where this is useful is in scanning rooms/objects which are for sale. Like 3d scanning the bike you are going to sell, or a realtor using it to provide a virtual 3d tour of a house. However, Microsoft already did it with their Photosynth program and regular photos you take [1], so I am not sure how this is going to fair if it turns out to be expensive.
My idea was more of a replacement for a shopping list, not necessarily one's memory. To do diffs on physical environments may help situations where the contents of the diff matter. Maybe you don't have to catalog, maybe it can just show you what shape appears to be gone. Yes, there are many practicalities not ironed out, but I could see it being useful.
You don't need a 3D scan to analyze what products are there. Google Googles has done this very well for years and its 2D. The main tech you need here is image recognition, not 3D analysis.
But image recognition on a 3D scan may be more accurate (and processor intensive). Possibly more error prone though.
Speaking of food related ideas, when can a grocery store let me just pick up things, and walk out the door? Why can't I walk in a grocery store, swipe my credit card, then just fill up bags, and walk out? Or pause for a second at the door as it verifies my CC is good for that amount, then allow me to walk out.
It's such a waste of time to get groceries, wait in line, unload them at the cashier, scan them all, pay for them, reload them again.
Couple of ideas...
1. Some type of RFID tags built into all items, so the checkout can read all the prices when you step through the scanner.
2. You order everything online at home. When you get to the store, you swipe your CC, and your order is automatically picked in the back warehouse, and comes out out within a minute. Downside, this wouldn't work for certain produce, where you want to pick the bananas that look the best, or the green onions only if they're up to your freshness standard. However, it could be combined, so you order 95% of your groceries ahead of time, then just pickup the few extras and add them to your order waiting at checkout. This would mean 95% less time picking out items, faster checkout times since 95% of your items don't need to be scanned, or bagged.
He worked on the Kinect project at Microsoft as well. In fact he put up the prize money for the Open Kinect contest run by Adafruit to develop drivers for the Kinect.
I was Google when they were trying to hire him, he turned them down to go work at Microsoft. Its interesting to see him at Google these days. I was really inspired by his projector/Wii hacks. I even built a couple with some of those pico projector units that Woot gets now and then for $100. My interest was building a simpler structured scanner for doing 3D printing.
Watching the demo in the 2nd half of the I thought, cool I can watch video in 3D without wearing goggles. And than I heard the head tracking really works only when 1 user is using it.
Well dang it, I will sacrifice spending time with wife if I can watch a movie in 3D without wearing goggles...
I see that his focus moved from living room TV/game console to a mobile device...
Yeah, I was really disappointed at the time that Nintendo didn't move on it, as it obviously worked really well out of the box, with no hardware modifications needed.
It could have made an awesome additional experience to some games (even if it was optional), and they could have done it with no accessory required.
I tried out his demo back then and unfortunately it isn't as impressive in real life as it is on video. The problem is that at the distance you usually have your television the most important depth cue is the stereo separation of images, i.e. what you get when wearing 3D-glasses.
So while the objects move around as if you would move in relation to them - your brain still tells you that the image is painted on the surface of the television.
I wish I could go back to the time when I thought this kind of thing was awesome. Nowadays, it's just one more aspect of our private lives that'll be stored on Google's (or whomever) servers, sold to advertisers, harvested by the NSA, and abused by law enforcement. Add some object recognition to the 3D scanning, and you can start getting marketing messages about how much better [Featured Brand]'s refrigerator would suit your needs, courts will rule that no reasonable person would expect the interior contents of their house to be private and require a search warrant, and the DEA will be able to find something that looks enough like drug paraphenalia in the images from anyone's home to justify a home invasion of whoever their preferred target of the moment is.
The problem is also that, "watching you" is a bad analogy. It implies, like you mention, that the entity has to prioritize who/what they "watch". This is a bad analogy because unlike humans, who can't watch historic events and therefore can only speculate at them (not held up in court), these entities can look back with a high degree of accuracy.
The problem, is no longer that someone is "watching you". Its worse. The problem is that someone, one day, could watch your entire life. Then proceed to pull apart events and use them, mostly out of context, against you.
I wouldn't call myself paranoid. I'm not doing anything about it. Honestly, if the data was only retained a month, unless needed in a current investigation, I would agree with you, this wouldn't be worth mentioning. However, retention of data is cheap and the data of your life will probably outlast you. As such, the parent posters in this convo have a point, it is something worth giving attention to.
PS. And to be quite honest, I don't even care that they can look back at my life and scrutinize me for an email or two. The real fear is that they can pull specific quotes or life choices out of context. You as an individual can't even discredit them because you don't have access to the original files (unless the entity does you a favor and shares them with you). So you can show how innocent the same email quote or life choice is while in context. You are instead left with your memory, and hopefully powerful rhetoric to convince a jury you are innocent.
> All your doing is slippery sloping your way into a cynical Utopian future which exists only within your own psyche. Your comment reeks of paranoia and baseless conspiratorial fear. If all you can think of in relation to the uses of cool and new technology is someone taking advantage of you than this is most likely the wrong industry to be participating in.
What you label as "paranoia" and "baseless conspiratorial fear" is better described as "examining the potential consequences of the things we build". You are advocating that we examine only the positive potential uses of the technology we develop and that we ignore the potential consequences, because "we'll work it out and everything will be awesome!", or something.
Perhaps the potential consequences will never come to fruition--but it's still very important that we examine them. There's a real shortage of that going on, which is why some people post negative reactions to these developments rather than something more balanced. Stop trying to dismiss those concerns and that conversation--if you're not interested in hearing it or taking part in it, this is likely the wrong discussion forum for you to be participating in.
I suppose the good news is that 3D point cloud data in context of a public setting wouldn't be much more invasive than the already-pervasive video surveillance we have today.
The bad news is as you say: having mapping data of your private residence siphoned off by third parties, be it government or private industry.
I would say I'm as excited as I am worried about the potential for this technology. That said, I think the privacy implications are very similar to Kinect, which is already here. The only difference perhaps being mobility.
Did HN react to the Kinect or Kinect 2 this way? It seems like there's a lot of burden put on Google to not do stuff that could be creepy even though that's all they do.
I can't comment on "HN's reaction" because I don't tend to put much stock in trying to draw a consensus from HN.
However, my recollection is that there was a reasonably vocal reaction to the privacy implications of Xbox One / Kinect 2 in gaming and tech media, although they mostly related to the timing of the first Snowden leaks. This article is a pretty good example of the media hype around it: http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/16/4526770/will-the-nsa-use-t... .
I think the "always-on" nature was more criticized than the point-cloud/time-of-flight abilities of the camera, but pushback against more and more ways to collect data attached to equipment made by big tech corporations isn't exclusive to Google.
If you don't want to show something in the map you yourself create of your own home, then just don't include it in the map.
Having point cloud data of your home in general is a complete non-issue, I'm sure most of the time the government already has floor plan data for your home.
I am fine with the government having my floor plans for administrative, safety and regulatory issues. I am not fine with private, data-mining, advertising companies having up-to-date point clouds and imagery of my home.
Seriously?! This kind of talk sounds just like conspiracy theory to me. If the worst case you can come up with for this tech is that the DEA will be able to find pictures of drug paraphernalia YOU YOURSELF take pictures of and upload, then I really can't see why you take issue with this tech. Just don't turn the room mapping service on to take pictures of stuff you don't want online; you're still in control here. Besides, if the government really has it out for you as an individual, they won't need pictures of the inside of your house to justify searching it, I'm sure they can come up with any number of other reasons. Do you put stickers over your phone camera to prevent the DEA spying on your room to see your drug paraphernalia? No? I didn't think so.
The possible benefits of this tech are tremendous, and far outweigh any crazy conspiracy theory downsides.
My comment was somewhat tongue in cheek and hyperbolic, but none of it is outside the range of what goes on with every other similar technology today. My main point was that I used to be excited about stuff like this, but now I just wonder how new tech will be abused to deliver ads.
Such a boring and cynical way to see the world. Even if the technology is used to target ads to you more effectively, how exactly is this a bad thing? How are you being harmed?
This is essentially putting a Kinect in your phone and hooking it up with hopefully high-level APIs. It may take 2-3 years to make it into regular phones, but when it does it will be huge. Apple's acquisition of PrimeSense (the makers of the 1st gen Kinect) means they're also working on this.
To give you a real-world example: when I started BarSsense (http://www.barsense.com) the core problem was tracking the path and velocity of a weightlifter's bar. I bought a PrimeSense camera because it can extract a lot more data and with greater accuracy out of an image than a regular camera. After some prototyping, I decided to use a 2D camera and deliver the software as an app because I thought wide distribution and ease of use was more important than the fidelity and correctness of the data - ie, the "worse is better" approach. When these cameras make their way into regular phones, "worse is better" will suddenly become "better".
I don't understand the application beyond gaming. The other applications discussed are basically shopping.
Essentially this would make it much easier to represent the physical world digitally. But what use cases does a consumer or the average phone user have for digital representations of the physical space around them, particularly given that the user is already aware of the the physical space around them? How can this sort of digital device extend our ability to interact with physical space?
Ocular implants are not the newest technology. The argument I think would be that a phone would be a cheaper alternative/more accessible. But I'm interested if the 'audio cues' that they mention in the video would be any better than the audio cues already present in most environments.
You need situational awareness in a device to start using it to paint data onto the surroundings. Once you can do that, a whole world of applications unlocks.
This reminds me of William Hertling's 'AI Apocalypse' trilogy, specifically the last book 'The Last Firewall' where brain implants enabled depth-specific metadata info on everyone in vicinity.
Seems like this is much more likely Google's goal. Couching their arguments in ways the consumer will benefit left me feeling woefully unimpressed with the possibilities.
But clearly PK Dick's self-aware advertising will not be possible until such ads can distinguish a human from a column of marble or a dog.
One example would be better versions of the iRobot cleaners. Currently they rely on a series of semi random movements and aren't particularly smart, which contributes to not being very efficient, and rarely getting into the edges of spaces. If you own one you've probably moved your furniture to accommodate their strange behaviour.
It's machine vision. I mean the possibilities are endless. Your phone can see now. This gives the device way more information about an environment then a camera would. I can put this on the dashboard of my car or on the handle bars of bikes, I could leave this thing on at home while I'm work, I could use it to as a click counter at a theater to measure capacity, I could navigate pitch darkness much better, etc.
Ever wanted a floor plan for your home? Just wave your phone around.
* Visual annotation
Add direction overlays, see the plan for a play your team is executing on the helmet HUD, highlight "dangerous"(weaving, too fast, whatnot) drivers on the car HUD.
* Integrate sensor data to extend human perception
Add an IR overlay. Sample sound across the room, do a volumetric display of noise levels. "see" the strength of your WiFi signal.
* Image post processing
You have a 3d map of an area, plus pictures of all textures - rearrange to your hearts content.
* Alternate Reality
Completely change the look of the world around you, just because you can. (Semi-useful application: Interior decoration. See that couch right in your living room before you buy it)
There are tons of applications there. It mixes the "reality" of physical space with the malleability of the digital space.
I pretty much stopped reading when they were going through the possible applications. Find my way around a super-store, shit I'd rather just stay out if at all possible.
In the meantime, I'm sure this will revolutionize something. It always does. I'm just in your same position ... a neo-luddite.
Also, I would much rather have a space elevator than a 3D mapping phone.
I don't think you're a luddite. With any technology like this, it's important to ask: what applications does this really enable and will those applications simply be a waste of time.
This is an unveiling of a technology but the "applications" they show in this video are probably a waste of time to most users. Google have not shown a killer app that uses this tech. Maybe they're working on something (they hint that they may be planning to integrate indoor mapping into Google Maps which might be interesting) but they're not showing it in this video.
That doesn't mean the tech is bad. But we haven't seen enough to judge it as useful to end users.
Google has acknowledged that their vision of where this is going is, at best, partial: "While we may believe we know where this technology will take us, history suggests we that should be humble in our predictions. We are excited to see the effort take shape with each step forward."
This has applications even for, uh, "normal" people. For example, online real estate portals. People who are house-hunting would probably appreciate floorplans or a 3D tour. Agents, landlords or property developers would be able to easily create those with their mobile device.
>Agents, landlords or property developers would be able to easily create those with their mobile device
But they won't! It is very difficult to get those people to post more than a low res picture of one room online when they can very easily walk through the house with a video camera, for example. Even large apartment complexes have 1-2 pictures on their website and call it a day.
Indeed. Panoramic photo VR tours were also gonna be the next big thing for real estate (remember QTVR?) but that only made sense for one-of-a-kind high end properties. Everything else is a commodity.
I used to work for one of the largest real estate portals in Europe, and people seldom watched the video of a property (if available). We also added floorplans from floorplanner.com and that converted way better. Now 25% of the listed properties has one.
To be honest, 25% is a very low number for such an essential piece of information about the property. Do you mind sharing how often people look at floor plans on your portal?
I'm a Russian living in the UK and it still surprises me that what Russians consider to be a viable information about property (gross internal and net internal area, kitchen area and a floor plan) is so rarely present on the UK property sites. "Lovely 2-bedroom" is all you normally expect.
I have chatted with one of the agents about how do they work, and no surprise - they lend out everything by phone, because "uploading pictures to website takes 24 hours."
I'm currently house hunting (in Sweden) and most real estate agents go for full on visual overload. Everybody has at least 30+ 'artistic' photos. Most also have nice videos of the house on their site. Some even have clever 360 panorama thingies. I basically never watch them as they add nothing of value.
The single most important thing, for me, is a nice and correct 2D floor plan. Add to that 5-10 well chosen photos and you're done on the visual front as far as I'm concerned. If you haven't convinced to at least go look at the house with that, no video or interactive 3D model is going to change my mind.
The big problem is that the overlap between the information I consider important and the information the real estate agent is eager to share don't overlap all the much
The technology is amazing, but honestly these applications don't really seem that valuable, especially to the average user. Facial recognition is the main application of machine vision I can think of, but even that has limited utility. And I'm not sure if it will actually benefit from this technology.
You don't understand it because it's beyond your comprehension, Morty. Because the world is full of idiots that don’t understand what’s important. And they’ll tear us apart, Morty. But if you stick with me, I’m gonna accomplish great things, Morty. And you’re gonna be part of them. And together, we’re gonna run around, Morty. We’re gonna- do all kinds of wonderful things, Morty.
Imagine being in a complex refinery, factory, etc., where tons of infrastructure is hidden behind walls or a couple of rooms away. Just hold your device in front of you, and peer through its virtual portal through the walls onto your hidden surroundings ...
Being able to know where everything is, along with an overlay of real-time status, etc. will be valuable.
Any mechanical engineer who's had to take a 3D object and model it in CAD will love this.
I've been toying with the idea of such software in a phone for a while but never bothered exploring it because I lack the technical chops. There's a piece of software I've previously used called PhotoModeller [1] that allows you to calibrate a standard digital P&S camera then use a bunch of shots of the scene from various angles to build a 3D point cloud of it. Given that you can know the lens of an iPhone to a pretty close accuracy, I was thinking that you could build a similar application straight into the phone that then could upload 3d scans to dropbox. It'd be invaluable to field work.
This takes the above idea and loads it with steroids. I'm really excited!
This is called photogrammetry - check out Autodesk's 123D Catch iPhone and web app, it yields some pretty good results if you take enough evenly lit photos with decent overlap.
in short, the physical world can be treated as a user interface to computers.
There's a large technical distinction of course; in the case of the bat, getting the technology up and running to do this was sophisticated enough that the video i linked to spends a large portion explaining how it works. they used centralized computers and centralized sensors (echo-locators) to figure out where the device you are holding is within a known environment. Nowadays, we can put so much compute power and so many sensors in a device you are holding that it can figure out its own environment instead.
You can see crowd moving on streets, where each person is a box (or a 3d avatar)... than if other people have installed the same app as you do.. it will show a icon on top of the box representing the person (the phone sends a signal IR, BT whatever) .. or is geolocated by a central server that sync the position of everybody..
Than you can interact with those strangers on the street.. in the 3d box you see representing the person, it may have more clues about that person..
so you can send a message to a girl/guy you liked and ask to hang out with you.. for intance.. its like a people radar..
Can work in traffic too.. so you can tag people in cars around you..
You can create a game, and involve people you have tagged, and give each one a role.. like in a RPG
If you get feedback of the camera too, you can see people with 3d stuff on top.. like holding a 3d gun..or a secret message in your virtual shirt.. it would work like a magical glass
I had this micro idea, a year ago.. this is the technology to make it work.. feel free to use it to create something
> But what use cases does a consumer or the average phone user have for digital representations of the physical space around them, particularly given that the user is already aware of the the physical space around them?
For the user? Probably not much at the moment, if ever.
For a company whose mission is to collect, aggregate, and extract monetary value from every last piece of data in the world?
For a government that's interested in extending its awareness?
Imagine if you integrate this with a future version of NEST thermostat or an integrated lighting, you can create different environments in a single room and change it on the fly.
An electrician working in a Hotel would be navigated to the right junction box.
You buy a new car and the manufacturer provides you with a virtual manual to find new controls, may be even basic repairs.
Personal transport. It makes what Google did with self-driving cars possible with far less stable transporters: motos, bikes, even small crates with wheels or even rotors in large logistic centrals. It can mean plans like drug-delivery using drones have a better technology in crowded places, like when approaching futuristic health centers that synthesize or store drugs. This is huge.
Wow, this is an amazing application. I love olympic weightlifting, and seeing somebody build a training aide using computer vision in an app makes me feel like living in the future. What a nice contribution to this beautiful sport.
This. I hadn't seen this app before and as I soon as I saw it I clicked "Install". Lovely stuff. Look forward to putting it to the test tomorrow and the foreseeable future.
As an aside, do you expect to monetize this in someway, or are you just doing it for the good of man?
Very neat. Making the screenshot animated might give an even better idea of how it works and make the page a little more dynamic/involving. Do you have any plans to have it analyze the trace(s) and give the user suggestions on what to change?
Very cool. Did you do all of the coding and heavy lifting on this app yourself? It certainly raises the bar in this area! Hopefully it didn't weigh you down whilst developing it.
But the trend I see is companies telling us to regularly buy stuff we really don't need (and obviously throw away our "old" solutions). The world has way more pressing issues than yet-another-gadget. And the planet's resources are not unlimited.
You're right that the science and practice of morality hasn't moved that much over the past 50 years while the science of technology has jumped by orders of magnitude, and that this is a problem that needs addressing. That doesn't mean we should stop evolving the state of the art in technology though. This is not an either/or situation. Ethical science relies on the advancement of technology, and vice versa.
I'm sorry that I'm not able to solve world hunger and world peace. Not sure why that means I cannot take it upon myself to hypothetically build a mobile computer-vision-powered app? Please enlighten.
It doesn't mean it. It just means that if enough people think the same way, the world is doomed.
Or, if not doomed, it's not getting any better in areas that matter.
(People laugh at words like "doomed", assuming everything will be as it was when they were growing up. For some lucky ones that's true. For others the worse happens, like a financial collapse or a world war, and then they "knew it all along it was going to happen").
> It just means that if enough people think the same way, the world is doomed.
True in the sense that if "enough people" believe the Internet's favourite scare-story of imminent-financial-collapse (growing in popularity ever since Y2K) then it will indeed by necessity finally happen ;)
What "scare story"? Financial collapse already happened in 2008.
People paid a trillion in the US alone, out of their pockets, to ameliorate it (plus close to another trillion they lented to Detroit). And tons of middle/working class jobs are not coming back in the foreseeable future.
And that's the US. For some European economies it is even worse -- they got from 30% unemployment to double the suicide rates in 3-4 years time.
That sure was a big crisis but the word collapse for me implies total breakdown == after something collapsed, it no longer exists. The "financial system" still exists seemingly, even if arguably not in its best shape ever since.
One fairly obvious application of that is to have motorbikes that can act like Google self-driving car. If we replace most cars by two-wheels (say, with a roof for confort under the rain) we divide to a third the oil consumption for transport, i.e. a third of world’s oil spending.
That's 20% saving on global non-renewables. “Niche”?
This is sick! I lift and I've been wanting something like this for a looong time.
I think the end game of this technology can help people without a coach learn to lift. From what I've read about how people learn, immediate feedback is extremely important, as in within a couple of seconds. I'd love it if this took bar path and velocity information, and put it into a machine learning system. The app could watch you in real time and immediately tell you whether it was a good lift or what was wrong with it. Lift your butt up faster, or lift the bar faster, slower or whatever. I think you'd need to sit down with a couple good coaches and have them classify what's wrong or right with several hundred lifts to get your training dataset—but I would love to pay for this product.
PR works better when you don't compete with competitors for attention. You either beat them to the headlines, or you wait a couple of days to find a clearing. This announcement is interesting, but not nearly the scale of WhatsApp/FB.
An exception might be if you have a very similar announcement. Doing so would get you included in the same articles as your competitor.
>announcement is interesting, but not nearly the scale of WhatsApp/FB.
Wait, what? Why would Google view the WhatsApp news as competitive? Other than it setting an insane price and inflating bubbles more, how is the FB acquisition really useful news to anyone?
This tech will have far more impact on the world. Apart from the few people doing startups, FB buying WhatsApp will have almost zero impact in day-to-day lives.
> FB buying WhatsApp will have almost zero impact in day-to-day lives.
I was only responding in the context of parent's PR comment, re: scale of press worthiness of the day. Tech sites have been covering WhatsApp/FB non-stop for the past 24 hrs.
As for impact on the world, this is just a call for developers. I'm encouraged by the ambition, but it's too hard to judge if this will be successful. FB/WhatsApp will almost immediately affect 400M users (+1M more per day).
Facebook got some news that Google is about to announce an ambitious, experimental project so they preempt it by buying WhatsApp for billions of dollars.
Cool technology and all, but i find that it is an odd fit for phones. Apart from games and other gimmicky applications, or exceptional cases like navigation for the blind, what are the awesome applications of space detection for a phone? I can think of much more interesting applications in mobile devices like cars.
Think of a phone not as a phone, but more like a really cheap way to have a portable computer with a screen and battery that you can put sensors on. It comes in the phone package because the industry is very much geared to churning out that form factor on the cheap.
352 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 320 ms ] threadhttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7272849
http://techcrunch.com/2014/02/20/google-launches-project-tan...
This is a prototype phone for mapping scenes in 3D
That was the first thing I thought about - actual augmented reality down to the inch would be quite something.
That would be absolutely incredible... Firefighters die every year because they get disoriented and lost in zero-visibility conditions. Even if it didn't have a pre-generated map of the structure loaded... it could build a map as it went, and at least be able to provide a 'retrace my steps' view.
It could also be networked with other devices, such that all of the routes mapped could be composited and help in the identification of alternative routes should one become blocked.
SIGHT: http://vimeo.com/46304267
Instead consider you won't see the actual items in the room. Polygon shapes will replace "real-space" items (coffee table, sofa, bed, doors) but can be dungeon items (for D&D) or items in an evil corporate waiting room (a la Mission Impossible or Metal Gear).
Personally I cannot wait to be chased by Cloverfield like monsters/creatures along the skyline and weaving in between buildings downtown. Movie ads are going to be amazing.
I guess the positive interpretation is that crowdfunding seems to be putting some pressure on larger companies to go public with research projects earlier than they normally would.
Also, imagine making a 3D "scanner" that you can scan objects with into a virtual world, or print out on a 3D printer.
That's a bummer.
Also, the page's default background-color should be set to black (or something dark). Most of the text is white(ish) and with a slow connection the background images take a while to load, making it impossible to read while you wait. /rant
http://www.andysirkin.com/GetDocument.cfm?Resource=224&Hit=1
[this is not legal advice]
the reliance on lenses is a hinderance though as it has two and holding it without covering them both requires user effort. you can see it at the end of their video where a finger is partially over the second lens.
still, exciting!
The only thing we can infer from the public source code is that it has been enabled by default for whatever might be the next release.
So no news if with ART, other languages could be better supported or not.
Imagine taking a scan of your pantry, refrigerator, and/or laundry room. Then mark everything as what it is (e.g. "box of cheez-its", "milk", etc). Then come back a few days and do the scan again and it'll tell you what's missing. Once you return from shopping, scan again saying what the new items are (even if they aren't what was there). The software would probably need to recognize certain shapes so a slight rearrangement/movement doesn't change. It'd be like history/bookmarks/favorites for perishables!
* It takes a good amount of time scanning and cataloging everything and we are taking about a world where people don't find enough time to scribble down these things on a piece of paper.
* What if you pulled out cereal box A and cereal box B but switched places when putting them back?
* Since its scanning the boundary of objects, it won't be able to tell you if your Milk is empty, half empty or full.
The one thing I could think of where this is useful is in scanning rooms/objects which are for sale. Like 3d scanning the bike you are going to sell, or a realtor using it to provide a virtual 3d tour of a house. However, Microsoft already did it with their Photosynth program and regular photos you take [1], so I am not sure how this is going to fair if it turns out to be expensive.
[1] http://photosynth.net/
Then it will just be a nice convenience, not a big deal.
But that describes huge swaths of technology, so go figure.
But image recognition on a 3D scan may be more accurate (and processor intensive). Possibly more error prone though.
It's such a waste of time to get groceries, wait in line, unload them at the cashier, scan them all, pay for them, reload them again.
Couple of ideas...
1. Some type of RFID tags built into all items, so the checkout can read all the prices when you step through the scanner.
2. You order everything online at home. When you get to the store, you swipe your CC, and your order is automatically picked in the back warehouse, and comes out out within a minute. Downside, this wouldn't work for certain produce, where you want to pick the bananas that look the best, or the green onions only if they're up to your freshness standard. However, it could be combined, so you order 95% of your groceries ahead of time, then just pickup the few extras and add them to your order waiting at checkout. This would mean 95% less time picking out items, faster checkout times since 95% of your items don't need to be scanned, or bagged.
Johnny Lee was the guy with the awesome Wii Controller demos back in 2007 (can't believe it's been that long).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd3-eiid-Uw
edit: here's the full set of demos: http://johnnylee.net/projects/wii/ (also, I'm assuming it's the same guy, but his site says he's at Google now)
Back in 07/08 when he demoed his hacks in TED it really blew my mind. [1]
I was really hoping someone would pick him up and let him loose on some projects.
I guess Google did just that.
[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0H1zrLZwPjQ
http://procrastineering.blogspot.com/2011/02/windows-drivers...
I see that his focus moved from living room TV/game console to a mobile device...
It could have made an awesome additional experience to some games (even if it was optional), and they could have done it with no accessory required.
So while the objects move around as if you would move in relation to them - your brain still tells you that the image is painted on the surface of the television.
The problem, is no longer that someone is "watching you". Its worse. The problem is that someone, one day, could watch your entire life. Then proceed to pull apart events and use them, mostly out of context, against you.
I wouldn't call myself paranoid. I'm not doing anything about it. Honestly, if the data was only retained a month, unless needed in a current investigation, I would agree with you, this wouldn't be worth mentioning. However, retention of data is cheap and the data of your life will probably outlast you. As such, the parent posters in this convo have a point, it is something worth giving attention to.
PS. And to be quite honest, I don't even care that they can look back at my life and scrutinize me for an email or two. The real fear is that they can pull specific quotes or life choices out of context. You as an individual can't even discredit them because you don't have access to the original files (unless the entity does you a favor and shares them with you). So you can show how innocent the same email quote or life choice is while in context. You are instead left with your memory, and hopefully powerful rhetoric to convince a jury you are innocent.
What you label as "paranoia" and "baseless conspiratorial fear" is better described as "examining the potential consequences of the things we build". You are advocating that we examine only the positive potential uses of the technology we develop and that we ignore the potential consequences, because "we'll work it out and everything will be awesome!", or something.
Perhaps the potential consequences will never come to fruition--but it's still very important that we examine them. There's a real shortage of that going on, which is why some people post negative reactions to these developments rather than something more balanced. Stop trying to dismiss those concerns and that conversation--if you're not interested in hearing it or taking part in it, this is likely the wrong discussion forum for you to be participating in.
The bad news is as you say: having mapping data of your private residence siphoned off by third parties, be it government or private industry.
I would say I'm as excited as I am worried about the potential for this technology. That said, I think the privacy implications are very similar to Kinect, which is already here. The only difference perhaps being mobility.
However, my recollection is that there was a reasonably vocal reaction to the privacy implications of Xbox One / Kinect 2 in gaming and tech media, although they mostly related to the timing of the first Snowden leaks. This article is a pretty good example of the media hype around it: http://www.theverge.com/2013/7/16/4526770/will-the-nsa-use-t... .
I think the "always-on" nature was more criticized than the point-cloud/time-of-flight abilities of the camera, but pushback against more and more ways to collect data attached to equipment made by big tech corporations isn't exclusive to Google.
Having point cloud data of your home in general is a complete non-issue, I'm sure most of the time the government already has floor plan data for your home.
The possible benefits of this tech are tremendous, and far outweigh any crazy conspiracy theory downsides.
To give you a real-world example: when I started BarSsense (http://www.barsense.com) the core problem was tracking the path and velocity of a weightlifter's bar. I bought a PrimeSense camera because it can extract a lot more data and with greater accuracy out of an image than a regular camera. After some prototyping, I decided to use a 2D camera and deliver the software as an app because I thought wide distribution and ease of use was more important than the fidelity and correctness of the data - ie, the "worse is better" approach. When these cameras make their way into regular phones, "worse is better" will suddenly become "better".
Essentially this would make it much easier to represent the physical world digitally. But what use cases does a consumer or the average phone user have for digital representations of the physical space around them, particularly given that the user is already aware of the the physical space around them? How can this sort of digital device extend our ability to interact with physical space?
This sort of system could provide audio cues in any environment. That's already a big step up from 'most environments'.
[1] http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/10/new-tactus-case-concept-bri... [2] http://www.solidterrainmodeling.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky
You need situational awareness in a device to start using it to paint data onto the surroundings. Once you can do that, a whole world of applications unlocks.
But clearly PK Dick's self-aware advertising will not be possible until such ads can distinguish a human from a column of marble or a dog.
Ever wanted a floor plan for your home? Just wave your phone around.
* Visual annotation
Add direction overlays, see the plan for a play your team is executing on the helmet HUD, highlight "dangerous"(weaving, too fast, whatnot) drivers on the car HUD.
* Integrate sensor data to extend human perception
Add an IR overlay. Sample sound across the room, do a volumetric display of noise levels. "see" the strength of your WiFi signal.
* Image post processing
You have a 3d map of an area, plus pictures of all textures - rearrange to your hearts content.
* Alternate Reality
Completely change the look of the world around you, just because you can. (Semi-useful application: Interior decoration. See that couch right in your living room before you buy it)
There are tons of applications there. It mixes the "reality" of physical space with the malleability of the digital space.
In the meantime, I'm sure this will revolutionize something. It always does. I'm just in your same position ... a neo-luddite.
Also, I would much rather have a space elevator than a 3D mapping phone.
This is an unveiling of a technology but the "applications" they show in this video are probably a waste of time to most users. Google have not shown a killer app that uses this tech. Maybe they're working on something (they hint that they may be planning to integrate indoor mapping into Google Maps which might be interesting) but they're not showing it in this video.
That doesn't mean the tech is bad. But we haven't seen enough to judge it as useful to end users.
I liked this part.
But they won't! It is very difficult to get those people to post more than a low res picture of one room online when they can very easily walk through the house with a video camera, for example. Even large apartment complexes have 1-2 pictures on their website and call it a day.
I'm a Russian living in the UK and it still surprises me that what Russians consider to be a viable information about property (gross internal and net internal area, kitchen area and a floor plan) is so rarely present on the UK property sites. "Lovely 2-bedroom" is all you normally expect.
I have chatted with one of the agents about how do they work, and no surprise - they lend out everything by phone, because "uploading pictures to website takes 24 hours."
The single most important thing, for me, is a nice and correct 2D floor plan. Add to that 5-10 well chosen photos and you're done on the visual front as far as I'm concerned. If you haven't convinced to at least go look at the house with that, no video or interactive 3D model is going to change my mind.
The big problem is that the overlap between the information I consider important and the information the real estate agent is eager to share don't overlap all the much
Sure with embedded in a smartphone would be more convenient, but I'm sure agents have some cameras when they get in houses.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Irf-HJ4fBls
And then release it for VR applications/games (one can hope).
Imagine being in a complex refinery, factory, etc., where tons of infrastructure is hidden behind walls or a couple of rooms away. Just hold your device in front of you, and peer through its virtual portal through the walls onto your hidden surroundings ...
Being able to know where everything is, along with an overlay of real-time status, etc. will be valuable.
I've been toying with the idea of such software in a phone for a while but never bothered exploring it because I lack the technical chops. There's a piece of software I've previously used called PhotoModeller [1] that allows you to calibrate a standard digital P&S camera then use a bunch of shots of the scene from various angles to build a 3D point cloud of it. Given that you can know the lens of an iPhone to a pretty close accuracy, I was thinking that you could build a similar application straight into the phone that then could upload 3d scans to dropbox. It'd be invaluable to field work.
This takes the above idea and loads it with steroids. I'm really excited!
[1] http://www.photomodeler.com/index.html
It does just that and even let's you post the scenes.
in short, the physical world can be treated as a user interface to computers.
There's a large technical distinction of course; in the case of the bat, getting the technology up and running to do this was sophisticated enough that the video i linked to spends a large portion explaining how it works. they used centralized computers and centralized sensors (echo-locators) to figure out where the device you are holding is within a known environment. Nowadays, we can put so much compute power and so many sensors in a device you are holding that it can figure out its own environment instead.
Is there something special about the house I'm pointing my phone at?
Who owns the daycare centre I'm pointing my phone at? Have there been any licensing / regulatory violations?
Paint a coloured path on the floor or wall to guide me to the dentist's office.
I'm old and can't see very well. Give me verbal directions to navigate (indoors) to get to the clinic.
I've got a wet spot on my basement ceiling. Highlight the outside of the house where water might be entering.
You can see crowd moving on streets, where each person is a box (or a 3d avatar)... than if other people have installed the same app as you do.. it will show a icon on top of the box representing the person (the phone sends a signal IR, BT whatever) .. or is geolocated by a central server that sync the position of everybody..
Than you can interact with those strangers on the street.. in the 3d box you see representing the person, it may have more clues about that person..
so you can send a message to a girl/guy you liked and ask to hang out with you.. for intance.. its like a people radar..
Can work in traffic too.. so you can tag people in cars around you..
You can create a game, and involve people you have tagged, and give each one a role.. like in a RPG
If you get feedback of the camera too, you can see people with 3d stuff on top.. like holding a 3d gun..or a secret message in your virtual shirt.. it would work like a magical glass
I had this micro idea, a year ago.. this is the technology to make it work.. feel free to use it to create something
just call me for a beer later :)
For the user? Probably not much at the moment, if ever.
For a company whose mission is to collect, aggregate, and extract monetary value from every last piece of data in the world?
For a government that's interested in extending its awareness?
Priceless.
As an aside, do you expect to monetize this in someway, or are you just doing it for the good of man?
I'm planning to monetize and I have a few ideas, hopefully one of them works out!
Sorry, today is clearly Pun Day.
But the trend I see is companies telling us to regularly buy stuff we really don't need (and obviously throw away our "old" solutions). The world has way more pressing issues than yet-another-gadget. And the planet's resources are not unlimited.
I don't see how ethical science relies on the advancement of technology, though. I'm not even sure what ethical _science_ is, to be honest.
Or, if not doomed, it's not getting any better in areas that matter.
(People laugh at words like "doomed", assuming everything will be as it was when they were growing up. For some lucky ones that's true. For others the worse happens, like a financial collapse or a world war, and then they "knew it all along it was going to happen").
True in the sense that if "enough people" believe the Internet's favourite scare-story of imminent-financial-collapse (growing in popularity ever since Y2K) then it will indeed by necessity finally happen ;)
People paid a trillion in the US alone, out of their pockets, to ameliorate it (plus close to another trillion they lented to Detroit). And tons of middle/working class jobs are not coming back in the foreseeable future.
And that's the US. For some European economies it is even worse -- they got from 30% unemployment to double the suicide rates in 3-4 years time.
That's 20% saving on global non-renewables. “Niche”?
You can focus on and isolate part of a rep to really understand how well "YOUR" performed
The problem I have is that I don't have a smartphone. Each cool app like this brings me closer to getting one though.
Can anyone suggest an alternative to this app that could work with video files? Or maybe something that I can stick to the barbell?
I think the end game of this technology can help people without a coach learn to lift. From what I've read about how people learn, immediate feedback is extremely important, as in within a couple of seconds. I'd love it if this took bar path and velocity information, and put it into a machine learning system. The app could watch you in real time and immediately tell you whether it was a good lift or what was wrong with it. Lift your butt up faster, or lift the bar faster, slower or whatever. I think you'd need to sit down with a couple good coaches and have them classify what's wrong or right with several hundred lifts to get your training dataset—but I would love to pay for this product.
ITS NOT IT'S
It's not "it's"! It's "its".
An exception might be if you have a very similar announcement. Doing so would get you included in the same articles as your competitor.
Wait, what? Why would Google view the WhatsApp news as competitive? Other than it setting an insane price and inflating bubbles more, how is the FB acquisition really useful news to anyone?
This tech will have far more impact on the world. Apart from the few people doing startups, FB buying WhatsApp will have almost zero impact in day-to-day lives.
I was only responding in the context of parent's PR comment, re: scale of press worthiness of the day. Tech sites have been covering WhatsApp/FB non-stop for the past 24 hrs.
As for impact on the world, this is just a call for developers. I'm encouraged by the ambition, but it's too hard to judge if this will be successful. FB/WhatsApp will almost immediately affect 400M users (+1M more per day).
Facebook got some news that Google is about to announce an ambitious, experimental project so they preempt it by buying WhatsApp for billions of dollars.
/sarcasm
Edit: and you can duck tape it to [car|bike|ect].