Mojo AR contact lenses hands-on: A new way to look at the world
How Mojo’s lenses work
Unlike soft contact lenses that are made of flexible plastic, the Mojo lenses are rigid gas permeable lenses that rests on the sclera — the white of your eye — forming a vault over your cornea.
The lenses are specifically designed for the specific topology of the wearer's eyes. That way, Sinclair said, they don't rotate or slip during the day, keeping the display embedded on the Mojo lens pointed at your fovea, where the center of your field of vision is found.
This required customization explains why the demos I used at Mojo's Saratoga, Calif., headquarters featured VR headsets and exterior lenses, rather than the extensive fitting needed for a pair of contact lenses.
The current version of Mojo's lenses feature oxygenation, which allows the company's employees and testers to wear the lens for extended periods. (Sinclair says it's quite comfortable.) The future version, in addition to adding a battery, will have a higher-resolution display, motion sensors for tracking eye movements, and an image sensor that can see what you're seeing, for computer vision purposes. In other words, the lenses will be able to recognize the objects you're looking at and bring up contextual information.
For now, the work at Mojo is going to focus on efforts to shepherd the contact lenses through the FDA-approval process now that the basic idea behind these AR-powered devices looks solid.
"We're wearing them. We see content. We know that it's not a matter of if now, it's just a matter of when and proving the safety and efficacy so the FDA certifies it," Sinclair said.
See the full story here: https://www.tomsguide.com/hands-on/mojo-ar-contact-lenses-features-specs
Spatial, Nreal, and 5G carriers team up for holographic collaborative AR
Spatial’s eponymous holographic collaboration software is one of the most impressive augmented reality apps to date, enabling lifelike 3D avatars to communicate within virtual workspaces, assuming you’re using one of nine supported devices to participate. Today, the company is announcing a partnership with AR headset maker Nreal and three cellular carriers to bring a collaborative AR solution to the mass market using 5G.
The carriers — Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, Japan’s KDDI, and South Korea’s LG Uplus — provide the high-bandwidth, low-latency 5G network environment necessary to enable Spatial’s software to run smoothly, as well as stores to sell Nreal’s Light and the required Android smartphones.
See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/20/spatial-nreal-and-5g-carriers-team-up-for-holographic-collaborative-ar/
With An Election On The Horizon, Older Adults Get Help Spotting Fake News
A recent study suggests these classes could be increasingly important. Researchers at Princeton and New York universities found that Facebook users 65 and over posted seven times as many articles from fake news websites, compared with adults under 29.
"People who are not digital natives didn't grow up online, having a sort of a natural relationship to using computers and the Internet," he says. "They are simply more susceptible to the kinds of online content that happened to be weaponized in that particular election.
"If we were standing in line in the supermarket, and we saw a tabloid," she says, "people in my generation know what that means, but if we see something online, the traditional cues we're used to are not present."
Nash says confirmation bias, the tendency to interpret new information in a way that confirms prior beliefs, can also get stronger with age.
Isolation can be a factor, too...
At the Schweinhaut Senior Center, trainer Bre Clark coaches participants about the difference between propaganda, deep fakes and sponsored content. And she runs through a checklist for evaluating information online: Who wrote the information? What's the source of a claim? Does the author have an agenda?
See the full story here: https://www.npr.org/2020/02/26/809224742/with-an-election-on-the-horizon-older-adults-get-help-spotting-fake-news
Facebook Is Buying Another Virtual Reality Game Studio
Facebook Inc. said it has acquired development studio Sanzaru Games to join the Oculus gaming group inside its virtual-reality division.
Sanzaru has produced a number of games, including from the Sonic the Hedgehog and Marvel Studios franchises, according to its website. The studio’s most popular VR game, Asgard’s Wrath, was highly reviewed at the time of its release in October, and was included in several games-of-the-year lists.
See the full story here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-02-25/facebook-is-buying-another-virtual-reality-game-studio
How AI is changing the business landscape in the entertainment industry
Video Games
One area of entertainment that’s been benefitting from advances in AI for years is the world of video games. When the player is tasked with dispatching a platoon of demon soldiers from hell in Doom, things are a great deal more engaging if the demons behave in unpredictable ways and adopt tactics to make life more challenging. If the opponent behaves in a scripted, idiotic way, then the challenge disappears, and so too does the fun.
Rendering
AI-driven processes are finding their way into 3d rendering more generally, outside of videogames. Nvidia’s denoising, upscaling and ray-tracing software has found its way into real-time applications, as well as pre-rendered ones.
Automated Translation
When a work of fiction is produced in a given language, its audience is limited to those who can understand that language. As such, a novel published in English might struggle to find an audience in China. That is, without the help of a professional translator. A good translator will not just translate the words of a sentence, but their meaning and implications, too.
Natural Language Processing enables filmmakers to automatically insert subtitles into their films. Moreover, analytics can determine exactly how long a given subtitle should appear on the screen, so that audiences aren’t given a preview of an upcoming line before it’s actually spoken.
Sports
We might think of sports broadcasting as something that’s best controlled by a human producer. Camera operators focus on the area of interest (usually the ball, or a player). But with the help of and AI, the action could be followed just as closely.
Censorship
Artificial Intelligence can also help broadcasters to check footage for potential bad language and other adult content. Of course, this has sinister implications in countries run by authoritarian regimes, but it also can help smaller broadcasters to avoid fines and angry letters. Imagine a livestream, for example, where certain expletives are filtered out automatically by an artificial intelligence. In online streaming services like YouTube, an AI might be able to provide age ratings, and warning for specific kinds of graphic content.
See the full story here: https://ventsmagazine.com/2020/02/25/how-ai-is-changing-the-business-landscape-in-the-entertainment-industry/
AI Deception: When Your Artificial Intelligence Learns to Lie
We need to understand the kinds of deception an AI agent may learn on its own before we can start proposing technological defenses
See the full article here: https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/artificial-intelligence/embedded-ai/ai-deception-when-your-ai-learns-to-lie
Virtual Reality to simulate audiences reactions to future building designs
30005 V-Sims Room in ACE 30 Sept 2019. Dr Antony Darby - Principal Investigator (University of Bath), VSimulators. Jon Slade - Experimental Officer. Julie Lewis-Thompson - Commercial Manager. Katy Manning - Administrator. The VR room is used to simulate the effect of movement due to wind in high rise buildings. Client: Will McManus - Comms
A simulator has opened at the UK's University of Bath, using virtual reality projection and a moving hydraulic platform immersing people in a range of lifelike environments
See the full story here: https://www.worldarchitecturenews.com/article/1671650/virtual-reality-simulate-audiences-reactions-future-building-designs
A team of Imagineers will discuss Disney’s tech breakthroughs at TC Sessions: Robotics + AI, March 3 at UC Berkeley
On March 3, Disney will be returning to the event to discuss some of the breakthroughs the entertainment giant has been making around robotics for its theme parks. We’ll be joined by Disney Imagineers Dawson Dill, Selina Herman and Joe Mohos.
The trio have been working on using advancements in technology to enhance rides at the park, blending physical trackless vehicles with other physical and virtual tools to transport riders both figuratively and literally. The team will discuss their latest breakthroughs in the space and the applications such technologies will have in entertainment and beyond.
See the full story here: https://techcrunch.com/2020/02/24/a-team-of-imagineers-will-discuss-disneys-tech-breakthroughs-at-tc-sessions-roboticsai-march-3-at-uc-berkeley/
Purdue University Global commencement to include first-of-its-kind virtual reality component
Purdue Global virtual reality commencement
While some 400 Purdue University Global graduates take part in commencement ceremonies in-person Thursday (Feb. 27) in Los Angeles, an additional 75-plus are planning to participate virtually, thanks to a first-of-its-kind pilot program.
Each of the graduates participating virtually will receive a Purdue Global branded headset to use during the ceremony, as well as a commencement program, tassel and honor cord, if applicable. In Los Angeles, a camera operator will provide 360-degree views – via an Insta360 Pro 2 camera and streamed live on YouTube 360 – and the experience will be launched from Purdue Global’s internally created conference center, PG Connect. A traditional single-view video feed also will be provided via Facebook Live for anyone to watch.
“The graduates will see and hear everything as if they were sitting in the Skirball Cultural Center,” Pelletier said. “When the ceremony begins, they will feel like they are in the procession line marching with the on-site graduates. They will sit with their fellow graduates and watch everything that is happening around them during the ceremony. The virtual graduates will walk onto the stage, hear their name announced and see their picture displayed before returning to their seat.”
See the full story here: https://www.purdue.edu/newsroom/releases/2020/Q1/purdue-university-global-commencement-to-include-first-of-its-kind-virtual-reality-component.html