A cool use of those tiny projectors …
blair | November 29, 2009Most people who know me know that I remain unconvinced of the usefulness of wearing projectors around your neck, despite all the cute fake mocked-up demos that people do. But, if you are going to do something with projectors, that isn’t going to work “in the real world” anyway, why not something cool like this? (As an added bonus, this is done with a pile of those new Nikon cameras with the projectors built in.)
How do you think about SixthSense?
It uses wearing projectors as output device for Wearable AR, and well demonstrates its pratical usefulness.
I’m aware of SixthSense, yes. It’s a cute grad student hack, with some well put together demos. But, I don’t see it as ever working in the way they present it, and I’ve admit to being a bit surprised that so many people are buying into it. During questions after her ISMAR talk, Pattie admitted that the none of the presented scenarios actually work, they are all just demos/envisionments. Yet, at the same time, she was also unaware of the other work that’s been done in this space, especially in Japan, where people use shoulder/head/body mounted projectors (or, in the case of tele-robotics, robot-mounted projectors) to do some of the same things that they present in their videos; of course, those other systems are more limited, but they also seem to work for what they do.
In general, I don’t see this “worn projector” setup as working. Hang a projector (or flashlight) around your neck; now, go and pretend to do useful things using the image it projects. The image will move around unless you are very still; if you project on any non-trivial surface, the image will by uneven and hard to interact with or perceive; it won’t point in the direction you’d like it to point unless you contort your body; lean back, look around, sit comfortably, and it won’t be projecting anywhere useful.
I think the work of Ramesh Raskar and Oliver Bimber, who do projective AR but in more controlled and well constrained situations, is much more on the mark, and far more compelling.
Thanks for your detailed explanation. I see your points why you think “worn projectors” are not that useful.
I have thought about why “so many people are buying into it” for a long time. Maybe because the SixthSense satisfied people’s expectations of mobile social interaction to some extent and here the Internet was made alive or “Outernet”. From this point, I think social AR or AR 2.0 will attract more attention.