NaviCam

In Ubicomp today, while discussing a paper previously presented in this blog (see The Human Experience), we got to see a video of Sony's NaviCam system in action (see link http://www.sonycsl.co.jp/person/rekimoto/navi.html). Seeing this system actually working was pretty cool, and a handful of applications extending this functionality immediately jumped to mind, all of which could be potential thesis topics, or business plans.

Combining the augmented reality capabilities of the camera & display setup with a wearable, glasses-based display could allow application developers (like me :P) to create real-time navigation software, meta-information pop-ups, and all kinds of cool stuff!

One immediate thought that jumped to mind as a detractor was the image I had seen of some geek in the wearable computing field with a webserver in a backpack that he lugged around everywhere. No consumer would buy that, but then I thought that if this backpack could be shrunk down to the size of an iPhone, which it almost certainly could, then this would be a viable market opportunity.

One target audience for such applications would be the military. Personnel in the field could have information on way points, location of friendly/hostile persons, radar & network coverage, etc, overlayed on top of real world vision, eliminating the need for secondary maps & gps devices. And, the military's level of network connectivity is legendary, so gaining access to this information is essentially a solved problem.

Iunno, just an idea. Sounds like it would be fun to tune around in one of these sets, seeing maps and stuff overlayed on regular vision.