[Cyborg] Interesting idea

[Eric Boyd]

Your idea reminds me of the 'aremac' stuff that Steve Mann did back in 
the 90s.  Camera in reverse.  The idea is to have a camera right in 
front of where your eye is, and a screen right behind it, and then have 
software that sits between the camera and what the screen shows.  Then 
you can arbitrarily change the (live) image entering your eyes - not 
just contrast, you can edit out ads, superimpose text, capture stills or 
video of exactly what you see, do all the classic 'augmented reality' 
stuff.  The trick is having the camera exactly in front of the eye, so 
that there isn't any strange distortions due to positions and stuff.  
But of course the camera is not the hard part - the hard part is the 
screen.  I agree with fenn that you're going to find any affordable 
display quite crappy - although since his vision quality is already 
reduced, maybe that will be less of a concern?  You'll still discover 
that peripheral vision is killed, the eye strains because of the close 
focal distance, the glasses are heavier than you'd like, etc.etc.

Still, fun project.  I'd totally hack up a myvu or similar.  There was a 
set at noisebridge for the longest time, in the cyborg/sensebridge 
area.  No idea if it's still there.

You could also prototype using a smart phone trivially.  Write an app 
that uses the camera and the screen and does the contrast/brightness 
enhancement.  Hold phone close to bad eye :-)

Eric



On 8/4/11 1:52 PM, Quinn Norton wrote:
> Alexis (sometimes friendly editor of mine) over at Atlantic just posted this: http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/diy-augmented-reality-a-pair-of-glaucomacorrection-glasses-for-my-dad/243102/
>
> Which seems like an interesting project. How would you do it?
>
> Quinn
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