philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

STANFORD RESEARCHERS CREATE FIRST-EVER AUGMENTED REALITY 3D HOLOGRAPHIC HEADSET USING ORDINARY GLASSES

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“Our headset appears to the outside world just like an everyday pair of glasses, but what the wearer sees through the lenses is an enriched world overlaid with vibrant, full-color 3D computed imagery,” said Stanford’s Gordon Wetzstein, an associate professor of electrical engineering.

“There is no other augmented reality system out there now with comparable compact form factor, or that matches our 3D image quality,” added Gun-Yeal Lee, a postdoctoral researcher in the Stanford Computational Imaging lab and co-first author of the published paper outlining the team’s efforts. ...

The key, they determined, was improving the 80-year-old holography techniques with the power of 21st-century AI computing to dramatically improve the depth cues of the projected holographic images. ...

“With holography, you also get the full 3D volume in front of each eye increasing the life-like 3D image quality,” said Brian Chao, a doctoral student in the Stanford Computational Imaging lab and also co-author of the paper.

The team also employed modern breakthroughs in nanophotonics and waveguide technologies, which increased the complexity and overall realness of the projected images. ...

Having completed their initial prototype, the team says they can now envision a number of potential applications for their system....

Although more work is expected before the augmented reality headset made from ordinary glasses is commercially available, the Stanford team says their ability to combine modern AI techniques and nanophotonic breakthroughs with 1940s holography is the step that folks in their industry have been waiting for. ...

See the full story here: https://thedebrief.org/stanford-researchers-create-first-ever-augmented-reality-3d-holographic-headset-using-ordinary-glasses/