II-New: Seeing the Future: Ubiquitous Computing in EyeGlasses

This project is building a prototype ecosystem in which a collection of people can interact in an environment with the envisioned personal augmented reality (AR) device of the future research. The provided hardware serves as a platform for understanding and building of the ecosystem for personal AR devices that a user can ask 'Where did I put my keys?' and get an instantaneous response from his/her eyeglasses. The envisioned system can also remind people to take medicine, create a collaborative reconstruction of an environment incorporating the perspectives of multiple people, or an app that enables one to shop for any item seen while walking down the street. All of these applications and more could be enabled by personal ubiquitous hands-free visual devices that have total awareness of the environment.

This project provides hardware to enable research in developing technologies for personal AR systems that are unencumbered, ubiquitous, and can be used hands-free, with a wide field-of-view display overlaid to the user's view of the surroundings. Such devices would enable the development of societally and commercially beneficial applications such as assistance tools for physicians. The prototyped hardware and software components are supporting the research to reach these goals. The collaborative projects enabled by the prototypes are also studying unique research questions, including enhancing everyday life activities, health care management and training, as well as computer science research questions such as distributed interactive computer vision, distributed computing, energy/power management, security, and privacy. Broader impacts include developing applications for the disabled, tools for healthcare management, and elderly assistance.