234486 Resource 187691 21 21 1244519869871 1244778556760 Controlled Here's looking at you, kid (with data overlay)!

The combination of new, bidirectional, head's up eyeglasses with wearable computers could change the way we look at our computers. Literally.

According to a <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://blogs.zdnet.com/emergingtech/?p=1580" title="Heads up! Interactive data eyeglasses">ZDNet story today by Chris Jablonski</a>, a German technology company, <a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="http://www.ipms.fraunhofer.de/en/" title="Fraunhofer Institute for Photonic Microsystems (Fraunhofer IPMS)">Fraunhofer IPMS</a>, is working on data eyeglasses that not only display data on the lenses of the glasses, but also tracks your eye movements, turning your eyes into a computer input device. <blockquote> "Without having to use any other devices to enter instructions, the wearer can display new content, scroll through a menu or shift picture elements simply by moving her eyes or fixing on certain points in the image." </blockquote> <img height="171" width="244" border="0" align="left" src="docs/heads-up-eyeglasses_3.jpg" alt="Bidirectional, Heads Up Eyeglasses" style="border-width: 0px; margin: 0px 15px 10px 0px; display: inline;" title="Bidirectional, Heads Up Eyeglasses" />Imagine this bidirectional eyeglass technology combined with the wearable computer prototype demonstrated at a TED talk in February of this year. (See: <a href="item/228470" title="Changing the Internet (and Human Capability) as we Know It">Changing the Internet (and Human Capability) as we Know It</a>) The potential of the wearable computer is enormous, but the weakest element of the prototype was its output mechanism.  The prototype used a small projector, mounted on the wearer's chest, to project a computer display onto any nearby surface—a wall, another person, etc.  While this was impressive, it has many drawbacks, the most obvious of which is: What if there is no nearby surface?  Plus, the mechanical logistics of such a projector are troubling (e.g., stabilization, power consumption, interference with physical activity, etc.) These eyeglasses may be able to overcome most of these drawbacks with the added benefit of being able to use eye movement as an input signal.  A combination of eye gestures and voice commands may be able to provide an incredible level of "hands-free" control over applications. Since my days of programming early microprocessors by loading machine code via toggle switches, I have joked that I wanted a <code>DWIW</code> opcode (Do What I Want).  Eye movement can be such an effortless—often subconscious—activity, that it may seem that an eye-movement-driven application is doing just that.   10 application/xml false forward-looking technology news TED Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9.0.10) Gecko/2009042315 Firefox/3.0.10 127.0.0.1 127.0.0.1 aseidl 68.40.167.222 false true false false true 188081 false false true false false false true 187691 blog blogsite/FASeidl/web