They recently bought an EEG neuroscience company and are already doing some really cool work with that technology. For example, if you stare at a switch, you might want to flip that switch, or perhaps you were just staring into space. What DAQRI does is have the switch pulse and then measure your EEG signal. If your stress level spikes, you didn't want the switch to flip. If the opposite happens, you did want to flip the switch and the action goes through. Their helmets also use the EEG sensor (combined with an oximeter I think) to be able to detect heart attacks and call an ambulance before you realize what's happening.
They also took over actively maintaining ARToolkit, which had become neglected in recent years. The reason they did this was they hated seeing researchers using Vuforia (a closed source black-box) and wanted the standard for AR to be open source again.
Can you explain the bit about the switch a little better? I can't understand what is being controlled by what. Is it a physical switch in real life (i.e. is this an augmented reality thing) or is this a button in the UI
A lot of the current prototypes use head position and have a little (usually circular) status-bar-type thing that fills in. You quickly learn that if you look at a thing and you don't want it to activate, turn your head a bit before the status bar hits full :-)
As a keen cyclist I'd quite like to see this stuff built into a bike helmet, real time GPS, backwards looking camera, speed and route corrections, FLIR for night riding will be interesting to see where we are in 5 years if this takes off the price should fall pretty rapidly.
Exactly what i thought. It would need to look more subtle though, i don't want to get laughed at at every intersection because i look like some guy out of the Tron movie.
I don't understand this. Who cares what other people think! You have ZERO control over the perception others have of you. The sooner you realize this the better.
I am teaching my 5 and 7 year old children this very important fact of life. The things you actually control are very, very limited. If you can't control your own heart beat, why would you worry about what others thought of your helmet, jeans, hair cut, shoes, etc? The fact is even if it was "cool" to some, it would be idiotic to others... and you have no control over either.
Except for the fact that you do have some control over the perceptions of others. It's actually a pretty large part of the human operating system: taking a best guess as to how the community of people important to your own survival might perceive your choices and behaviors. It's no longer as important for immediate survival, but for social status (still an important Darwinan consideration), it's an imperative skill.
Nope. First, you said "guess" which is anathema to control. Second, you like to think you have some control but you don't. You don't have control over your own body and you want to tell me that you have control over other people's perception?
Before you tell me that you have control of your body: Make your heartbeat exactly 137 times a minute right now and record it. You don't control you body...
Now, skill in the attempted manipulation of perception is something... but it is hardly a done deal. That is, one can try to manipulate perception but the manipulation is not guaranteed. In many cases, the attempted manipulation will have the opposite effect. See pick-up lines as an example.
I know that I can't control other people's perception. You may or may not come to the same realization some day....
You do not have zero control over the perception others have of you. Our culture is not so heterogeneous that you can't predict what the majority will think of a given outfit you might wear, for example.
Granted, the control is indirect: You have zero control over what people would think of you if you were to wear corduroys and a Hawaiian shirt, but you can control if you wear corduroys and a Hawaiian shirt.
Indirect control is the same as no control. If I try to project what others may think, I am attempting to trick myself into thinking I have control of the situation. I don't. My emotional response to "what others think" is something I can control. Therefore, I chose not to emotionally attach "what others think" to my thoughts to the best of my ability.
I can only control my thoughts and the actions borne from those thoughts.
> I can only control my thoughts and the actions borne from those thoughts.
This part I completely agree with. If one doesn't at least try to attempt to work out the consequences of the actions borne from those thoughts, then one is being irresponsible.
If you walk into a bar, pick the largest drunk man in there and call his mother a whore, then there's a decent chance you will get punched. You did not punch yourself in the face, but to pretend that you had no control over this consequence is ridiculous.
The truth is somewhere in between - it's a good principle to teach your kids that they shouldn't only care about what people think of them, as you say. At the same tiem, if you had absolutely no chance of influencing other people with what you wear, there'd be no dressing to impress, dressing down, costume parties, etc.
There is a ton of value in Stoic philosophy that has been lost in modern society. The same modern society that worships "looks", "Celebrity", and countless other craptacular "things" that haven't materially changed the human condition for the better.
I like that they're allowing customers to build custom applications using their SDK. Also, targeting industries seems like a much better way to build this kind of technology than building a mass market consumer product.
I get that this provides context specific information to the wearer. But the site makes no mention of the safety aspects? In all the images, the sides of the head and the ears are totally exposed. The primary reason for wearing a helmet is safety - so some information on the safety rating and certification will help, especially for people in an industrial setting
I was thinking the same thing, specifically when I scrolled down and it was talking about the safety visor- OK great it's scratch resistant, I'm sure that'll be a fantastic plus when it's out on a job site.
Awesome technology, but their marketing/information leaves a lot to be desired.
Smart Helmets are really interesting for many use cases, but i would always be a bit concerned with the battery so close to my head, at these things technically can explode or catch fire. It's not much better with smartphones though, but still.
ive been waiting for something like this come along. Google glass and MS Hololense will be much more powerful once they exploit the computing space a helmet allows for.
Agree, they should tone down the 80's sci-fi vibe IMHO. But I think you may overestimate the control your average industrial worker has over their work situation. That is, if it helps the bottom line, these will be bought and deployed by the owners/management, and there is little the workers can do about it.
>Is any industrial worker going to be seen dead wearing this thing, given how it appears currently?
Yes.
I worked for two years as an industrial electrician. Industrial workers will generally eschew PPE in general when they think it's an unnecessary burden and that they can get away with it. That's why projects have foremen and companies have internal safety inspectors to police the foremen.
On its own, a firefighter's helmet is a ridiculous piece of gear. It isn't particularly good at protecting the entire head, abysmal at protecting the face, and is top heavy.
We wear the helmet as part of an ensemble that could use a makeover for strictly functional purposes, quite frankly. However, tradition and perception have kept the U.S. fire service in this outdated piece of kit for decades. Perception and caring about what others think is silly. It is the equivalent of school age children caring about what "little Tommy" thinks of his/her shoes on the playground.
The fact is we can't control others perception. We can only control our thoughts and actions related to those thoughts. Society will not level up until we stop worrying about the perception others have of our stuff and/or the way we look.
How they came up with that name is an entertaining story. The founder wrote a script to find five-letter .com domains that had QR (as in QR code) and AR in them. However, he forgot to specify that the R should come immediately after the A, and DAQRI was the result.
That's really a myth put out by Bernie Sanders and those on the left. While it is true that wages alone have not kept up with productivity, if you add in benefits, total compensation has kept up with productivity.
They recently bought an EEG neuroscience company and are already doing some really cool work with that technology. For example, if you stare at a switch, you might want to flip that switch, or perhaps you were just staring into space. What DAQRI does is have the switch pulse and then measure your EEG signal. If your stress level spikes, you didn't want the switch to flip. If the opposite happens, you did want to flip the switch and the action goes through. Their helmets also use the EEG sensor (combined with an oximeter I think) to be able to detect heart attacks and call an ambulance before you realize what's happening.
They also took over actively maintaining ARToolkit, which had become neglected in recent years. The reason they did this was they hated seeing researchers using Vuforia (a closed source black-box) and wanted the standard for AR to be open source again.