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To: David Pesetsky who wrote (4223)	5/26/2000 11:23:00 AM
From: Wolff	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 6847

Dave, just saw your profile, you're a straight man, OK, continue on. Toss em up :-)

To: David Pesetsky who wrote (4223)	5/26/2000 6:02:00 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Respond to of 6847

Hello David, > Can you comment on the possible use of wearables in > education (classroom), and as entertainment ala IMAX > theater, or planetariums? I can comment ... not sure if it will be valuable! ;-) I'm not sure of the uses inside of a classroom or theater, but one of the uses that drove me to do research in this area is the area of "augmented reality". Augmented Reality differs from "virtual reality" in that the computer is "overlaying" computer text or graphics which "augment" your normal vision. So you still see what you see, but you are probably using some sorts of goggles, etc. which allow the computer to add information. In one way you can think of the "Terminator" movies where Arnold would look at something, and the text in the corners of his vision would appear and "augment" the image with some additional information. One off the requirements for augmentation like this is accurate "head-tracking". The computer might want to know what direction you are looking, and what angle your head is at, in order to supply the appropriate information. In addition, if you are going to be wanting a "bull-eye" to be superimposed in your vision to indicate some destination that you are heading towards (e.g. you tell the computer to guide you to the closet bagel shop) then the computer must know the orientation of your head to "draw" the bulls-eye in the right location in your field of vision. The reason that I went through all of that is that there are two places that I can see wearables being used in your examples. One is in the "personal theater" type of application. You do not need a wearable to do this, but you could put on your goggles and get a "IMAX-like" experience with wide-screen viewing and sounds. The goggle technologies are not affordable for this purpose ... But two other ideas come to mind. I read once where augmented reality was being explored for astronauts on the shuttle. Instead of shipping tons of user manuals and procedure guides into space with each mission, the astronauts could simple have a "virtual book" that would "float" in space next to them. When they turned their head to the right, for example, they would see a "book" floating in space. It would actually be drawn by the computer on the inside of their helmet, but provide them with an endless amount of information. So in schools ... virtual books could become a reality ... When thinking of planetariums, imagine that you could look at the sky - any time of the day or night - and see the stars, planets, or other celestial objects overlayed in your field of vision. When I go to one of the projects that I'll be testing this summer, I'm working on a marine navigation system for use in fog and at night ... overlaying navigation markers and other information in the pilots field of vision ... I'm thinking that augmented reality is going to become a very powerful extension of human activity, IMHO. I'm hoping that some of this will spark some conversation in these areas ... Scott C. Lemon