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It's hard to understand how AR / holographic technology could help people in their day-to-day life. There are a zillion potential uses, but all of them seem ex

It's hard to understand how AR / holographic technology could help people in their day-to-day life. There are a zillion potential uses, but all of them seem extremely complicated and hard to pull off. Take the example of fixing your car. For example, performing your own oil change, or replacing your alternator. That seems like a perfect use case for holo, right? The goggles would tell you what needs to be done and what the next step is. But that would involve so many technical challenges that it seems very difficult. You, as the creator of FixYourCar holo app, would need need to detect what type of car the user is looking at, what part of the car they're looking at, render an overlay with the correct orientation, and so on. And at the end of all of that, it's not entirely clear that your app is more helpful to them than if they'd just look up a list of steps for fixing their car using their mobile phone. I guess what I'm asking is, what do you think holo's killer app would be?

crsna 12y ago
Imagine a car mechanic remotely helping you to do what's needed to be done. This use case is showcased in one of the videos and it is probably not as complicated as building an AI engine to help a user repair his car. This thing is really crazy!!
- sillysaurus3 12y ago
  Ah, yeah.. That's a good point. And the bandwidth probably exists to transmit images from the goggles to someone else in near-realtime. Now I'm really excited about this.
- taeric 12y ago
  This is actually a relatively silly use case for this. A lot of the actual difficult things that a mechanic can do for you usually involve more strength than you have. Or just experience in actually working with things that they can't see. Now, a mechanic using this to "see" things that are actually in control of a remote robot? Pretty cool. Showing you the thing that is right in front of you? Cute, but ultimately silly.
  - aetherson 12y ago
    Yeah, I'm just not sure that I buy the idea that there's a big market for an expert coaching you through doing repairs via AR goggles. How exactly does this work? You still need to pay for an expert's time -- in fact, you probably need to pay more for it, because the expert is probably faster to do a thing than to explain the thing to you and then you do it. Also, the expert now needs to be someone with these additional skills of coaching someone through an operation. Tools are still needed -- is there actually a big market for the kind of repairs you can do with the tools that everyone has lying around at home but which is complicated enough to need hand-coaching by an expert? I mean, maybe! Especially if you can locate the expert in some place where labor prices are much lower (so: India). But then you also need the person to buy the AR goggles. And how often does this use case come up? Is this like 3D printers where people try to sell me on the concept that I could pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for something that can make me things that cost less than $20 and which I need three of every year?
    - guelo 12y ago
      At any given time there are probably thousands of car mechanic experts sitting idle
    - ewzimm 12y ago
      You could draw on a much bigger pool than professionals. There are plenty of people who know a skill and don't professionally sell their services but could spare a few minutes occasionally to help someone with a problem. If you combine skill tracking with instant global availability of services, you have a lot of room for development.
    - Rapzid 12y ago
      Training. Emergency assistance. Military applications. Don't trap yourself by thinking that the item needs to be the be-all for the Joneses.
      - chrissyb 12y ago
        Yeah this could make putting Ikea furniture together alot easier.
- Throwaway90283 12y ago
  If there's a market for this, why doesn't it already exist? You could take your smartphone under your car, and video chat with a mechanic anywhere in the world. The mechanic could even draw arrows or highlight areas on your video in real-time as it's looped back to your display.
soperj 12y ago
Or allow them to select from a list?
jawbone3 12y ago
That adblock thing would probably be great. Also, I ofthen wish there was an easy way all those specials in the store could be compared more easily. Usually when you work out that 2 for x offer you see they gave a generous 10% discount that made you buy an entire extra thing for no real savibg.
rasz_pl 12y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LE_IocFnL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LE_IocFnL0 http://www.bmw.com/com/en/owners/service/augmented_reality_workshop_1.html http://www.bmw.com/com/en/owners/service/augmented_reality_w... Its not like car manufacturers dont have cad models of their own cars or anything, right?
jdietrich 12y ago
I don't know about the consumer market, but I can think of numerous commercial applications. Sony currently sell an HMD for surgical use, allowing for comfortable and convenient viewing of video from endoscopic cameras. A practical translucent HMD would be extremely valuable in surgical procedures guided by x-ray or ultrasonic imagery. To give a trivial and easily-implementable example, I would have bought Google Glass without hesitation if it integrated with my electronics test equipment. Being able to view data from an oscilloscope or logic analyser without taking my eyes off the PCB would be a boon. PCBs are designed with fiducial markers as a necessary part of manufacture, and machine vision is already used extensively in many aspects of electronics manufacture and repair; It would be relatively straightforward to overlay all sorts of data that would be enormously useful to technicians and engineers. Stereoscopic and volumetric displays are used extensively in petroleum and mining geophysics; This equipment is currently relatively niche due to extremely high cost, but could be used in a much greater range of geoinformation applications if costs fell.
Gurkenmaster 12y ago
Making it easier to find your car in a large parking lot would be a start.

crsna 12y ago

Imagine a car mechanic remotely helping you to do what's needed to be done. This use case is showcased in one of the videos and it is probably not as complicated as building an AI engine to help a user repair his car. This thing is really crazy!!

sillysaurus3 12y ago
Ah, yeah.. That's a good point. And the bandwidth probably exists to transmit images from the goggles to someone else in near-realtime. Now I'm really excited about this.
taeric 12y ago
This is actually a relatively silly use case for this. A lot of the actual difficult things that a mechanic can do for you usually involve more strength than you have. Or just experience in actually working with things that they can't see. Now, a mechanic using this to "see" things that are actually in control of a remote robot? Pretty cool. Showing you the thing that is right in front of you? Cute, but ultimately silly.
- aetherson 12y ago
  Yeah, I'm just not sure that I buy the idea that there's a big market for an expert coaching you through doing repairs via AR goggles. How exactly does this work? You still need to pay for an expert's time -- in fact, you probably need to pay more for it, because the expert is probably faster to do a thing than to explain the thing to you and then you do it. Also, the expert now needs to be someone with these additional skills of coaching someone through an operation. Tools are still needed -- is there actually a big market for the kind of repairs you can do with the tools that everyone has lying around at home but which is complicated enough to need hand-coaching by an expert? I mean, maybe! Especially if you can locate the expert in some place where labor prices are much lower (so: India). But then you also need the person to buy the AR goggles. And how often does this use case come up? Is this like 3D printers where people try to sell me on the concept that I could pay hundreds or thousands of dollars for something that can make me things that cost less than $20 and which I need three of every year?
  - guelo 12y ago
    At any given time there are probably thousands of car mechanic experts sitting idle
  - ewzimm 12y ago
    You could draw on a much bigger pool than professionals. There are plenty of people who know a skill and don't professionally sell their services but could spare a few minutes occasionally to help someone with a problem. If you combine skill tracking with instant global availability of services, you have a lot of room for development.
  - Rapzid 12y ago
    Training. Emergency assistance. Military applications. Don't trap yourself by thinking that the item needs to be the be-all for the Joneses.
    - chrissyb 12y ago
      Yeah this could make putting Ikea furniture together alot easier.
Throwaway90283 12y ago
If there's a market for this, why doesn't it already exist? You could take your smartphone under your car, and video chat with a mechanic anywhere in the world. The mechanic could even draw arrows or highlight areas on your video in real-time as it's looped back to your display.

soperj 12y ago

Or allow them to select from a list?

jawbone3 12y ago

That adblock thing would probably be great. Also, I ofthen wish there was an easy way all those specials in the store could be compared more easily. Usually when you work out that 2 for x offer you see they gave a generous 10% discount that made you buy an entire extra thing for no real savibg.

rasz_pl 12y ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LE_IocFnL0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LE_IocFnL0 http://www.bmw.com/com/en/owners/service/augmented_reality_workshop_1.html http://www.bmw.com/com/en/owners/service/augmented_reality_w... Its not like car manufacturers dont have cad models of their own cars or anything, right?

jdietrich 12y ago

I don't know about the consumer market, but I can think of numerous commercial applications. Sony currently sell an HMD for surgical use, allowing for comfortable and convenient viewing of video from endoscopic cameras. A practical translucent HMD would be extremely valuable in surgical procedures guided by x-ray or ultrasonic imagery. To give a trivial and easily-implementable example, I would have bought Google Glass without hesitation if it integrated with my electronics test equipment. Being able to view data from an oscilloscope or logic analyser without taking my eyes off the PCB would be a boon. PCBs are designed with fiducial markers as a necessary part of manufacture, and machine vision is already used extensively in many aspects of electronics manufacture and repair; It would be relatively straightforward to overlay all sorts of data that would be enormously useful to technicians and engineers. Stereoscopic and volumetric displays are used extensively in petroleum and mining geophysics; This equipment is currently relatively niche due to extremely high cost, but could be used in a much greater range of geoinformation applications if costs fell.

Gurkenmaster 12y ago

Making it easier to find your car in a large parking lot would be a start.