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Comment by icanhackit | Hacker News Reader

It feels like this is the key to unlocking useful AR [1] for low powered, lightweight headsets. If the heavy lifting for locating and interacting with objects in 4D space is done with UWB, you don't need to do too much computational heavy-lifting - reducing bulk, increasing available space for batteries and reducing battery draw.

[1] Right now I can't really see a killer app for AR, something that would make you super-human enough to want a layer of abstraction between you and the real world. However if I could remotely interact with objects through walls, like turning off a lamp in a bedroom or seeing where my wife is and opening up a audio chat with her so that we're not yelling to hear each other, all of a sudden the trade off of having to charge and wear another device seems less annoying. All of a sudden you have powers not unlike a sorcerer.

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> Right now I can't really see a killer app for AR, something that would make you super-human enough to want a layer of abstraction between you and the real world.

For me the key uses of AR technology would mostly have to do with abstracting input and output (mostly) away from the actual physical devices involved, which would benefit from UWB for certain cases but really wouldn't hinge on it.

For a simple example: Sitting in an airline seat, and having a virtual 'big screen' to watch a movie - but having it anchored to a certain relative position, so I can still look left and talk to a cabin stewart without removing AR glasses (and still have the film playing in my peripheral).

Another simple example would be providing a GPS 'HUD' when driving, similar in result to physical devices you can currently get that project onto windshields. UWB stuff might benefit here by providing a reference point to anchor virtual objects to (e.g. saving a position and orientation relative to the physical chip in the car).

Yes. And even what I'm doing right now -- sitting in front of a display, and typing on a keyboard. The display, keyboard and touchpad are great.

But sometimes it'd be pleasant to sit outside. Or useful to work while in transit. I can do all those, but they involve smaller screens, more cramped keyboards, and the hassle of dealing with gear.

Having it all in AR would be very cool.

Keyboard in AR is always going to have the tactile feedback problem. If we could solve the other two though it'd go a long way.

It's not impossible to make gloves that aren't bulky and would vibrate in response to key presses.

They should feedback before keypress, so you know what you’re pressing beforehand. Keypress response itself can be as simple as... click sound.

If I don’t need the bulk of a laptop screen on a train/plane a physical keyboard, possibly with processing integrated like current laptops, would be fine. In my experience there’s always space on the tray table for a keyboard, but once I angle the screen so I can see it everything’s hanging off the edge and squashing me in.

Decades ago, I had a rather nice folding keyboard for an early Qualcom "smartphone". It was mostly aluminum, and folded into a ~10 cm square, maybe 2 cm thick. Unfolded, it was about the size of a netbook keyboard. I would have kept it, but it was cabled for a docking stand, and I didn't want to attempt rewiring it.

This silicone keyboard looks interesting: https://www.amazon.com/Sungwoo-Foldable-Silicone-Keyboard-Wa...

But maybe not very durable.

The problem isn't so much the feedback, it's that there's a lack of a barrier to stop you from pushing further (making the maximum finger movement minimal) and to a lesser extent that there's no spring mechanism to push the key and your finger back up.

Killer app: ambient information, especially face recognition. Think "thought bubble" information appearing over anything you might want to know about. I'm lousy with names, would be nice to see names over everyone I should know.

One line of thought I've pondered here for scifi settings is people being able to share their currently playing music that way, like a tiny virtual radio station.

Just the other day I was walking down a relatively quiet part of Amsterdam and some guy with a boombox taped to his bike 'shared his currently playing music with me'. It seems that is working just fine already.

Consider, for contrast, a crowded bus or subway instead.

I quite often have to sit next to people watching YouTube videos, or football games with through their speakers; why spend money on ear phones?

For my commute I set the radio to between 91.1 and 93.3. This range tends to be where the default for most Bluetooth and AUX radio broadcasters ends up being set.

Arguably an invasion of privacy, but it turns fellow commuters into DJs. I’ve discovered some good music this way.

Also lots of static.

Are you saying that if I turn on my phone's radio and set it between 91.1 and 93.3, I'd be able to hear what other people are listening to? Could you elaborate?

Nowadays, most new cars offer at least one way of connecting to an external playback device, via Bluetooth or wired auxiliary input or both. A decade ago, though, this was more of a premium feature. Back then, if you wanted to connect your music player or smart phone to your basic stereo, the simplest and least invasive way was a device that plugged into the headphone jack of your device (or alternatively connected to it via Bluetooth) and which broadcast a very low power FM signal. You would the tune your car stereo to the matching frequency, and your device's audio would be piped through the car's speakers. Usually the transmitter provided a way to choose from a list of frequencies so you could pick one not used by any local radio stations. When operating in good conditions, if another car was driving down the road next to you, they could also tune to the same frequency and hear your playback.

Then to preserve some semblance of individual privacy that would need each individual you want to display freely opting in and out. Whenever suits them. Whatever is wrong with just asking? Start a conversation, make a friendship...

Can you opt out of my brain recognizing your face?

Centralized face recognition where a single entity knows everybody a la Facebook would be a dystopian nightmare. Personalized face recognition where everyone has their own instance trained purely on the data they have access to (e.g. Apple's existing Photos face recognition) and only linking that face to the user's Contacts entry for the recognized person, that's not a privacy violation because that's just offloading information from my brain into my personal digital assistant.

Personalised but running on a cloud server, controlled by any third party is a step too close.

Who's to say they won't retain the biometrics long after you requested they remove the data? The standard HN trope is if it's out there it's never deleted. Trusting any corporate with data, given the last ten years, is never wise. Even Apple, busy marketing the privacy high ground.

No doubt someone would make a GDPR case against it though...

>Killer ... see names

Nice try, Yagami. But I’ll still take half your life for it.

-Ryuk

Face recognition is something I absolutely need. I can't remember people's names for the life of me. If I could train a set of AR glasses to recognize people I've met before and pull up their contact info on the fly, that would be immensely helpful.

The creepiness factor this could enable would be out of this world ... you could set this up to point out people who you’d swiped on Tinder, cam girls you were planning to harass, people who’d been doxxed and you wanted to confront, etc etc etc. Brave new world.

Assuming the phone and other beacon devices don't just give out its owners info via UWB, and Airdrop isn't in "Everyone" mode, this wouldn't happen.

For some negative consequences of this, check out the book Super Sad True Love Story.

For AR, instead of personal use think of what it can do in industry.

Autoworkers can have parts deep in the engine glow for them to see, plumbers can see through walls, doctors can see where major arteries normally run before they make an incision.

It's stuff like that, not turning on a lamp, that will push AR initially.

This tech will really make a big impact for AR stuff. You can precisely track objects in relation to your phone camera.

I love HomeCourt which is an app that uses your phone camera to track your shots and movement on any basketball court. In addition it has dribbling exercises where you have to practice dribbling with one hand while reaching for invisible objects and accumulating points. Wish I had this capability a long time ago

[1] Right now I can't really see a killer app for AR.

Talk to Microsoft, there is a killer app being put together for the DOD:

www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2019/4/6/18298335/microsoft-hololens-us-military-version

you’re thinking too consumer. the killer apps are commercial.

vehicle maintenance

medical procedures

circuit diagnoses (schematic overlay on pcb)

but UWB is irrelevant. those apps can easily work with wired connection.

UWB is for locating, not for data here.

...Amazon shelf worker. Data about their speed of work and how much time before they deplete their error grants.

...Security agents, recognizing faces at the entrance of a night club. Using the human only for his muscle.

But really, enough people have inagined usecases. If an obvious one didn’t surface now, it’s because it triggers the imagination without actual usecases. I live in an almost entirely virtual world, have fewer and fewer friends, am online 70% of the time whether home, at work, on holidays or in conferences, yet I feel no need for AR glasses. Though I do feel the lack of long-term friends though ;)

> Right now I can't really see a killer app for AR

Something, something faster horses.

The fact that so many people don’t see any use for AR and that the people who think they do are so spectacularly wrong are what make me excited for AR.

I want to see what nobody has thought of yet and Apple is the only company that I think is capable of that.

So far Apple has shown they can make low grade camera filters with AR. What do you think gives them an advantage over players like Microsoft Hololens + Holographic in the space?

Apple made iPhone when everyone else was copying Blackberry. They get some optimism from me based on that alone.

Yeah, but Blackberry was there and we knew exactly some things that people wanted smart phones for. Apple was able to refine it into the iPhone. Today, what's even the Blackberry of AR? Where not really even at the Newton of AR yet.

Even if that’s true, Apple’s the one that got there in the end with phones. That’s who I’ve got my money on until someone else proves me wrong.

I think this is a little bit of hindsight optimism over it all being obvious. It really wasn’t.

You wouldn’t classify the Hololens or Magic Leap as being at least the Newton of AR?

Yeah, maybe the newton of AR. I guess it was the internet and communication that made smart phones important, not the rest of what was in the newton. In that sense, maybe hololens is exactally the Newton of AR.

Hindsight is always 20/20.

But the lesson many people took from Blackberry at the time was that a physical keyboard was indispensable…

Yes, I think that's a key innovation that Apple made. But my point was blackberry was a proof of the problems that people wanted solve. iPhone's innovation was an interface one.

It feels like now, everyone is trying to solve the interface problem (I'll concede, perhaps not as well as Apple) but we still don't really know what the problems and use-cases really look like yet.

What? IPhone 1 was a copy from the first smartphone which was from LG.

Living in the UK, I think AR for walking apps would be neat. Label all the routes, the interesting ruins, old settlements etc. Looking out to sea for wrecks, sea life, label ships and aircraft.

Then put pokemon GO into the mix and it'd be really fun.

AR can replace every screen in your life.

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