Sony Sets Its Sights on Augmented Reality The future of mobile gaming will merge the virtual and real worlds.

Sony Sets Its Sights on Augmented Reality The future of mobile gaming will merge the virtual and real worlds.

  10:14:00 AM    Science Lover

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Sony has demonstrated a new augmented reality system called Smart AR that can be built into the company's future gaming devices.

Credit: Sony Corporation

Augmented reality involves mapping virtual objects onto a view of the real world, usually as seen through the screen of a smart phone. The technology has so far been used to create a handful of dazzling smart-phone apps, but has yet to take off in a big way. However, many believe that mobile gaming could prove to be an ideal platform for the technology. With Smart AR, certain real-world objects could become part of a game when viewed through a device such as the PlayStation Portable. This could allow game characters to appear on a tabletop, perhaps, or to respond to the movement of real objects.

Unlike many augmented reality systems, Smart AR does not use satellite tracking or special markers to figure out where to overlay a virtual object. Instead, it uses object recognition. This means it works where GPS signals are poor or nonexistent, for example, indoors. The markerless system is more difficult to pull off, but it allows many more everyday objects to be used.

"Prototypes of Sony Computer Entertainment's next-generation of portable entertainment systems will be integrated with this technology," says Takayuki Yoshigahara, deputy general manager of Sony's Intelligent Systems Research Laboratory in Tokyo. "SCE is also considering adopting this technology for its software development kit in the future." This would allow games developers to add augmented reality features in the games made for Sony consoles.

Sony has dabbled with the technology before, using two-dimensional barcodes known as CyberCodes as markers for tracking objects.

According to Yoshigahara, Smart AR identifies objects using an approach known as local feature extraction, which means it tries to identify salient parts of the object within the image. The system also tracks the object's movement, and works out its orientation. This is necessary in order to know how the virtual data should be positioned in relation to the object.

Smart AR also builds a rough 3-D map of a room. This is achieved by measuring disparities between different snapshots taken from slightly different perspectives as the camera moves. This allows virtual objects to interact with the environment.

Tobias Hollerer, an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, says Sony's technology combines several areas of research. "If they do anything new, it is in tracking the entire room," he says.

Edward Rostens, a lecturer at the University of Cambridge and cocreator of an augmented reality system for the iPhone, called Popcode, says getting several different techniques to work together using the limited processing power of a handheld device would be impressive.

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Computer Algorithm Able to 'Read' Memories

Computer Algorithm Able to 'Read' Memories

  9:58:00 PM    Science Lover

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Computer programs have been able to predict which of three short films a person is thinking about, just by looking at their brain activity. The research, conducted by scientists at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London), provides further insight into how our memories are recorded.

To explore how memories are recorded, researchers showed volunteers three short films and asked them to memorize what they saw. The films were very simple, sharing a number of similar features -- all included a woman carrying out an everyday task in a typical urban street, and each film was the same length, seven seconds long. For example, one film showed a woman posting a letter. (Credit: Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL)

Professor Eleanor Maguire led this Wellcome Trust-funded study, an extension of work published last year which showed how spatial memories -- in that case, where a volunteer was standing in a virtual reality room -- are recorded in regular patterns of activity in the hippocampus, the area of the brain responsible for learning and memory.

"In our previous experiment, we were looking at basic memories, at someone's location in an environment," says Professor Maguire. "What is more interesting is to look at 'episodic' memories -- the complex, everyday memories that include much more information on where we are, what we are doing and how we feel."

To explore how such memories are recorded, the researchers showed ten volunteers three short films and asked them to memorise what they saw. The films were very simple, sharing a number of similar features -- all included a woman carrying out an everyday task in a typical urban street, and each film was the same length, seven seconds long. For example, one film showed a woman drinking coffee from a paper cup in the street before discarding the cup in a litter bin; another film showed a (different) woman posting a letter.

The volunteers were then asked to recall each of the films in turn whilst inside an fMRI scanner, which records brain activity by measuring changes in blood flow within the brain.

A computer algorithm then studied the patterns and had to identify which film the volunteer was recalling purely by looking at the pattern of their brain activity. The results are published in the journal Current Biology.

"The algorithm was able to predict correctly which of the three films the volunteer was recalling significantly above what would be expected by chance," explains Martin Chadwick, lead author of the study. "This suggests that our memories are recorded in a regular pattern."

Although a whole network of brain areas support memory, the researchers focused their study on the medial temporal lobe, an area deep within the brain believed to be most heavily involved in episodic memory. It includes the hippocampus -- an area which Professor Maguire and colleagues have studied extensively in the past.

They found that the key areas involved in recording the memories were the hippocampus and its immediate neighbours. However, the computer algorithm performed best when analysing activity in the hippocampus itself, suggesting that this is the most important region for recording episodic memories. In particular, three areas of the hippocampus -- the rear right and the front left and front right areas -- seemed to be involved consistently across all participants. The rear right area had been implicated in the earlier study, further enforcing the idea that this is where spatial information is recorded. However, it is still not clear what role the front two regions play.

"Now that we are developing a clearer picture of how our memories are stored, we hope to examine how they are affected by time, the ageing process and by brain injury," says Professor Maguire.

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Holographic Projection Glide Paths

Holographic Projection Glide Paths

  8:58:00 PM    Science Lover

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Holographic Technologies are getting closer to becoming reality and soon we can see the data on our computers in 3D, 4D and 5D. We will enjoy Virtual Reality on our 360 X-Box in our living rooms. Military strategists and war fighters can play out the battle in the virtual battlespace in advance and then watch it un-fold in real time. Great, great grandchildren will be about to meet their past ancestors and watch a holographic video. We will communicate in video conferencing with the image of the other people sitting next us, but not actually there. All this is on its way and even more, as the applications are endless indeed.

One application, which has not been mentioned, yet is the potential for pilots to have projected glide paths in front of them as they fly, actually watching their aircraft (full-size) in front of them. All they will have to do is follow the projection and match their aircraft to the angles and speeds of the holographic aircraft ahead. The projection will be set for safest glide path, avoid wake turbulence and be the most fuel-efficient decent. This will make flying easier and become a great training tool for new pilots building hours and their skills.

This will insure a proper downwind to base and base to final approach, with perfect angles, no steep banks and help the pilot land at the perfect speed on the threshold. Additionally these Holographic Projections will be recorded and used for training air traffic controllers and used by flight instructors to watch to make sure the student pilot is coming along fine. The instructor will be able to reduce the scale of the aircraft to 1:24 or 1:48 scale and show student how they did. This can help in training new fighter pilots in the military as well. This can add to the simulator experience. Such technology will come in handy for the NASA SATS Program making general aviation safe as we move more private automobile traffic from our ground transportation infrastructures into the air and help with the Virtual Control Tower Simulation Training Systems to help commercial aviation.

http://sats.larc.nasa.gov/main.html

http://www.simlabs.arc.nasa.gov/vast/vast.html

Imagine eliminating wake turbulence accidents by helping pilots avoid wake turbulence, by using net-centric systems inside the aircraft, which will re-project the holographic aircraft in front of them. Good for collision avoidance as well. This will alleviate issues with the 3-minute rule, when it should be extended or when it is not a factor. The increased efficiency will help the traffic flow at the larger airports, moving more aircraft on their way in less time.

http://oea.larc.nasa.gov/PAIS/AVOSS.html

The Holographic Technology is almost here and it such advances in science has the potential of literally solving many safety and efficiency issues in aviation in the present period and safety in space in the next period. Think on this.

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