Eyes Have It With Retinal Display
It’s easy to fit all the components of a desktop computer into a case the size of a Walkman. The big problem is the screen. In fact, though, everyone has a very high-performance, dynamic, portable screen. It’s called your eyes.
Sight is nothing more than the brain’s interpretation of light entering the pupil and falling on the retina. MicroVision, a small company in Seattle, hopes to leverage the eye’s response to light.
MicroVision has developed what it calls a virtual retinal display that mimics the way the eye works. An image coming out of a computer is broken down into color and brightness. The system’s electronics then turn the image into pixels, which are carried by a fiber-optic cable to a pair of tiny, rapidly moving mirrors mounted either on the computer or on a head-mounted display.
The mirrors paint the pixel stream onto the back of the eye, just like a cathode-ray tube paints an image across a TV or computer screen. The images appear solid, but are translucent so the viewer can look at objects beyond.
The company expects to have working systems in roughly 18 months. At a cost of anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 each, early applications will be mostly medical and military. A surgeon using a minute camera to guide his work would see the pictures floating before him rather than having to check a monitor. Soldiers could call up detailed maps of enemy terrain with the locations of hidden land mines.
For those worried about having light beamed into their eyes, MicroVision says the light is no more than that coming off a computer screen.
Hang On to Your Digital Hard Hat: White-collar road warriors with their portable computers, cell phones and personal assistants are now being joined by their blue-collar brethren. Lian Liu, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Illinois, has come up with a hard hat that combines the functions of a camcorder, tape recorder, electronic note pad and digital camera into one lightweight piece of plastic headgear--a digital hard hat.
The new device is designed to help workers deal with construction documentation--including photographs, drawings and audio and video recordings--even as they scramble around on ladders or scaffolding. It protects the head and provides hands-free operation, since the system responds to voice control.
A head-up display serves as a monitor for both the video camera and the portable computer carried on a belt. A telecommunication link lets the wearer communicate with remote experts to solve engineering or construction problems and to retrieve project data from remote computers. Another application for the hard hat? Outfitting rescue workers as they search for survivors of an earthquake. Using data transmitted by the workers, remote experts could assess the safety and structural integrity of a damaged building.
DNA to Go: A new portable DNA analysis system developed at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory could revolutionize food and water testing in remote locations for contamination and help identify human remains on the battlefield.
The hand-held unit, believed to be the first portable, battery-operated DNA analysis system, operates on 1.5 watts of power from four nine-volt batteries--compared with laboratory-sized versions which consume 1,000 watts from electrical outlets.
Using a DNA analysis technique known as polymerase chain reaction, the machine makes copies of specific DNA from traces of blood or other cells--whether plant, animal or germ--and then analyzes them. A second unit can be used to perform real-time detection of the DNA as it is being synthesized, allowing a result to be obtained in less than 10 minutes.
In experiments done by the lab with Roche Molecular Systems in Alameda, Calif., and the University of Maryland Medical School, the DNA analyzer, which fits inside a small suitcase, detected HIV and the hepatitis C virus from human blood samples in less than 20 minutes. Another application for the system could be testing agricultural products in the field for diseases.
While You Were Sleeping: You may think you spend most of your life in front of a computer. But in actuality, you’re computer spends a lot of time sitting idle--while you are asleep, eating lunch or away from your home or office. Multiply your one machine by the hundreds of millions of other computers out there, and you end up with a tremendous computing resource that is just sitting around running screen savers.
What if, while you were away, your computer could sign on to the Internet and look for work--designing an ad for a business in Arizona or doing some complex calculations for a scientist in London? Even better, what if you could get paid for the work your computer was doing while you were sleeping?
Baruch Awerbuch, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University, believes that this scenario--called metacomputing--could be a reality in the near future.
People who need extra computing power or special programs for a one-time project could lease time on idle machines. An accountant who needs a graphics program to design his brochure could post a note on the Internet offering say 50 cents a minute for use of a Macintosh that has that program.
Most of the technology to share hardware over telephone lines or some other network already exists. What’s needed, says Awerbuch, is a system for buying and selling blocks of time as well as safeguards to make sure “renters” can’t pry into an owner’s personal files. People who are reluctant to loan their lawn mower to a neighbor probably won’t be interested in renting their computer to a stranger. But for someone interested in making extra money while they are at lunch, metacomputing could be the answer.
Freelance writer Kathleen Wiegner can be reached at kkwrite@aol.com
