Emerging Technologies

Emerging Technologies April 2012 T qualified of Contents 1. gate3 2. increase reality4 3. Googles confinement Glass5 4. Conclusion6 5. References7 1. Introduction Technology is a big part of our life and something we as humans adapt to easily. We earn conform to to accept that life lived through computer systems is natural. Gadgets and other electronic devices not only facilitate us with our every day lives notwithstanding they connect us to each other in ways we couldnt thus far fuck off imagined a few years ago. Technology has become coexistent with our reality and we have created unfermented(a) realities inside these machines. We represent ourselves online.We create newly lives that fuel take their own course. Online reality is becoming, to a greater extent and more, our lived reality. either new engineering is bringing us obturater to a life that is more and more lived digitally. cardinal years ago, none could have take down dreamed of the possibilities of person al smart phones or tablet device. Our lives atomic number 18 constantly being changed by connection with newer technologies. Using new NFC-based smart phones, we volition be able to pay without ever touching our wallets. There be devices that tell us what to wear or whats the weather forget be beatised and all we need to do is ask.With the speed of progress everyplace the last fiver years, female genital organ we imagine how things will look like ten years from forthwith? How is technology going to shape our reality? Will it be through more advanced forms of the digital reality we have created? How are we going to interact with our populace? More and more technological companies visualise that their survival in the market depends on innovation. Technological changes are coming quickly and their response to those changes mustiness be swift. So how is the biggest explore company in the world handling change?Google has proved over again and again that it backside enter a n already overcrowded market and bring something new to it. What can this tell us about brand new technologies being developed within Google itself? Is the wait giant ready to generate us the future? What emerging technologies will impress potential customers? On January 9th 2007, Steve Jobs, then CEO of orchard apple tree, unveil new alert smart phone to the world almost overnight it changed our make on how the mobile phone should look and behave. Its success had a major influence on many technology companies.Apple takeed that convergence innovation really leads to market success you can be the first to do something entirely new and dominate the market with it. This essay will look at Googles attempt to create the new smart phone to impress world with its picture on where the future is headed to and to use this new technology to change the marketplace and change Google. 2. Augmented reality Augmented reality (AR) is a live, direct or indirect, calculate of the real-world environment, with elements augmented by computer-generated sensory input such as sound, mental picture, graphics or GPS information (Wikipedia).AR basically has the ability to add or subtract information from ones perception of reality, through use of habiliment computer. Unlike virtual reality, where drug exploiter is completely immersed inside a synthetic environment, AR allows the user to put one over and engage with the real world, with virtual objects added on top of it. AR is about supplementing reality, not replacing it. It can be used to not just add virtual objects to a users view but to remove them as well. There are two different design approaches to building an AR system. Optical or goggle box technologies can be used for AR systems.Optical, or see-though AR working(a) by placing optical combiners before the users middle. These partially reflect light and working class images, so the user sees combined images of the real environment and the virtual one. This technology is commonly used in host aircrafts, where combiners are attached to the pilots helmet. The second type is video, where users dont need to wear any monitors that project AR but where the monitors are fixed or the image is projected in front of the user. The master(prenominal) hardware behind AR are processors, display, ensors and input devices such as accelerometers, GPS and solid-state compasses. AR can be mixed with other senses like touch to provide tactile feedback or sound to bring up the sense of reality. Google is not the first consumer- boil downed company to research and develop AR. Many others are already pioneering this technology. romp companies like Sony and Nintendo are already using AR in their handheld devices. Playstation Vita and Nintendo 3DS already come with AR cards allowing gamers to play games using device cameras to focus on real-life cards.Modern mobile phones have analogous uses of AR. Companies like Layar and Yelp use augment reality (with t he help of GPS compasses and connection to the internet) to display information that surrounds the user and is visible through smartphone displays. The users mobile phone displays real world images, scanned through the devices camera, with added information on its display. For example, Yelp gives information about nearby restaurants and bars, which is overplayed on top of a real-world image. The disadvantage of using AR with handheld devices are its physical constrains.Users have to hold the handheld device in front of them and its view is limited to the handhelds display. A more promising use of AR is shown by spacial augmented reality (SAR). In 1998, Professor Ramesh Raskar developed Shader lamps, which project imagery onto neutral objects enhancing the objects appearance using camera, projector and sensors. Raskar in his workshop showed how his device can operate within standard environment. The user is not contractd to wear the display over their eyes, instead a miniature pr ojector, worn by user, projects the imagery onto flat surface in front of him.The device includes a camera that captures real world images. Sensors in the camera record users intercommunicates and software package interprets their meaning. Examples of its use include users taking real-world screenshots just by making simple gestures, camera pointing at products to scan their barcodes, software then searches for products online and shows users more information about the chosen product. Users can annotate real world objects, get real date information about great deal and services via an internet connection and more.At CES 2012, company Innovega introduced AR-based contact lenses with special slobbering systems that allow human eyes to focus on the image projected close to the eye. Normally, the human eye cannot focus on images at this close range but with Innovegas contact lens the image becomes easier to focus on. Without these contact lenses, human eyes would have to be consta ntly scanned by the AR device and display would have to dynamically adjust focus, which would require additional hardware to read eye movements.What Innovega is attempting to achieve is to eliminate dynamic focus and try to set back it with a clever filtering system through the contact lens. Innovega is already working on the device that will project images on spectacles worn in front of the eye of the user, with wide field of view and very high resolution. These are just few examples of different companies trying to get the best of AR. save dynamic is still the key word to describe the level of innovation. None of these companies has yet produced a final examination product that would be available to masses. Nor has the best resourced of them Google. 3. Googles Project GlassOn 4th April 2012, on Googles social network Google plus, the search engine giant showed what it thinks new smart phones should look like called Glass it is a small, wearable device, which uses AR as its in terface with the user. The concept video on Glass shows us how Google thinks AR would work in real life (https//plus. google. com/111626127367496192147/posts) and concept photos show a wearable device that look identical to standard glasses. The video demonstrates how users of the device can interact with Googles already existing services like Google Maps, Google Music, Google+ Hangouts and more.Google has created a dandy ecosystem of apps and services and Android, the smartphone operating system developed by Google, uses most of these services successfully today. All of them are greatly integrated for a seamless experience to provide as much information to its user as is required. This environment of apps and services should be integrated into Glass as well, as Googles concept video suggests. But services and apps are only one side of the coin. Gestures and illustration control plays important reference in controlling this device. Glass should intelligently recognise not just vo ice commands, but phrases as well.Apples personal assistant Siri is a great example of the direction Google and Glass should be headed to. But even Siri is far from perfect. It requires constant connection with its servers to interpret the voice commands, it recognises basic phrases but it doesnt follow conversation, as Apple commercials suggest, and commands spoken with heavy accents are not recognised as they should. This is of course because this technology is just evolving and anyone in contact with voice recognition software can confirm that is far from perfect.What Google demonstrates in its concept video is a device that can not only recognise phrases but recognise different meanings to voice commands and, apparently, follow conversation as well. With device like Glass, there is no keyboard attached, so sending schoolbook messages, emails, taking pictures, getting directions all the basic functionalities of modern smartphones need to be interpreted differently. Another ev oke concept is control of the device through gestures. The concept video introduces a simple user interface.It is hole-and-corner(a) from the user, unless he performs a gesture or the device detects a particular head movement. In November 2001, Microsoft officially launched their gaming console Xbox and knowingly entered highly competitive market. They shifted from being solely a professional software company to the hardware and gaming market. Xbox was and today is grandly successful and shows how a technology company can focus not only on software but on hardware as well. Xbox Kinect, the gesture controller for Xbox 360 (second generation Xbox) was launched more recently and proved a huge success as well.Microsoft successfully merged a popular gaming console with effortless gesture and voice command controls. In the world of Nintendo Wii (another gesture-controlled gaming console) this was a natural step to compete in the gaming market. With project Glass, Google have to perfect gesture recognition and offer it in a much smaller device than Microsofts Kinect. fundament this be through? Or is Google creating a level of over expectation that their hardware cannot live up to? There are still major hardware and software limitations to this degree of augmented reality devices.GPS is soon accurate only within 30 feet from the device and doesnt work well indoors. The display that provides visual feedback needs to filter just fair to middling light for the user to see the environment behind it, but enough to actually merge virtual and real environment together. The brightness difference between indoors and alfresco is still a big problem. No display made to date can handle transformation from different environments as Project Glasss concept video demonstrates, and there is still issue with human eye focusing on image placed close to it. Glass is akin to a concept car, but not like those commercially ludicrous models automakers show off annually just to demon strate how impossibly blue the sky can be. Glass would be a new prism through which we would filter every aspect of our lives just as the smartphone went from zero to always on. (John C Abell / Wired. com 2012) Microsofts Xbox revenue is 14% of its on the whole earnings to this day and growing. If Google invests its huge resources to develop a device like Glass, can it generate similar revenue? Google started as a internet search company, and from search giant, it transformed itself into advertising provider.Using AdWords and AdSense technology, Google can design particular groups of people who are more willing to respond to an advertisement. Advertisers can submit ads and include lists of keywords relating to the product. When users search the web using keywords provided, Google displays ads as a part of the search result and advertisers pay for every time user clicks on the ad. With AdSense, web masters can integrate Google ads directly on their websites. Google would naturall y requirement to integrate this technology to Glass as well.With wearable computers, users would expose their every day lives and provide huge amount of valuable information about themselves for advertising purposes. Google would get access to information like, where users live, which bars or restaurants they like or which products they usually buy. Glass could record all of this and more, which would, of course, represent huge privacy aggression for many of us. What about ads themselves? How would Google integrate an ad system into wearable device? AR should provide more efficient ways to stream information.No spam emails or ads flashing right in front of your eyes. No unnecessary information about companies, products and services. It should automatically get ads, as required information, when it is actually needed, and when the user requires it, for example information about nearby restaurants, bars or products that interest the user of the device. It should be there to help whe never its needed. With Glass Google could change its advertising strategy from gathering and offering ads to providing useful info perspective AR much as Yelp provides today but on much bigger scale.Scientists working on Project Glass, Babak Parviz, Steve Lee and Sebastian Thurn remind us that this project is just the beginning of a large journey and many things may change in the course of its development. This device is still only an idea, and wont be ready for general release for at least two years. But even concepts can show us how companies, not only Google, can change themselves, adapt to the new technologies and how this change can welfare their future growth. 4. Conclusion Its still early to talk about success or failure of Project Glass.We do not know if Google can successfully develop a device that would meet our expectations. With AR devices like Glass, we could certainly get information about our environment more naturally but we will have to exchange our sense of priva cy for it. Google has great potential to unlock new revenue streams and, if done right, this may be conterminous step of computing devices that could change our view of reality and maybe next game-changing device that will change Google as well. 5. References Spatially Augmented Reality, Ramesh Raskar, Greg Welch, Henry Fuchs (1999) * A Survey of Augmented Reality, Ronald T. Azuma, 1997 * How Google Works, Jonathan Strickland (http//computer. howstuffworks. com/internet/basics/google4. htm/printable / 2012) * Wearable Computing Will Soon Intensify The PlatformWars, Frederic Lardinois, 2012 * Google furnish Face Serious Hurdles, Augmented-Reality Experts Say, Roberto Baldwin, 2012 (http//www. wired. com/gadgetlab/2012/04/augmented-reality-experts-say-google-glasses-face-serious-hurdles/? tm_source=Contextly&utm_medium=RelatedLinks&utm_campaign=Previous) * Augmented Reality Googles Project Glass engineers, Bruce Sterling, 2012 (http//www. wired. com/beyond_the_beyond/2012/04/augment ed-reality-googles-project-glass-engineers) * Augmented Realitys Path From Science Fiction to Future Fact, John C Abell, 2012 * Project Glass (https//plus. google. com/111626127367496192147/posts) * Augmented reality, Wikipedia (http//en. wikipedia. org/wiki/Augmented_reality) *