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Comment by Someone1234 | Hacker News Reader

Stupid idea(?): Back-project onto some sunglasses (or corners/edge for behind), and give deaf people some basic level of sound-based situational awareness. Combine with some voice -> text tech, and you could have something pretty interesting.

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There is a long trail of dead startups attempting this. But don't let this dissuade you, please do a Show HN when you launch.

Probably requires the technology to reach some tipping point. It was the same with VR and motion tracking. We've been able to do those things for nearly half a century, but it hasn't been anywhere near commercially viable until recently.

The tipping point is the availability of quality, affordable AR glasses. Until recently, AR has been too niche, so even if the acoustic camera technology is fine, the company also has to build AR glasses to go with the other part of the system. Whenever Apple comes out with AR glasses, then writing an acoustic camera app is almost trivial in comparison to having to also having to design some AR glasses. Not having to design the glasses makes acoustic camera technology overlay software way more commercially viable.

> availability of quality, affordable AR glasses

And since Intel, Google, Facebook etc keep buying startups that produce cool things and preventing them from producing more cool things (North Focals being the most recent I'm aware of) it's gonna be a while

And if someone actually makes something remotely useful and successful, Google or Amazon will create a direct competitor and totally run you over.

Seems like the scenario the patent system is supposed to prevent.

Epson and others are still going strong, but AR has been pigeonholed into drone piloting and industrial applications space for several years. The software ecosystem (especially compelling and usable interfaces for input and programming) is what's really lacking for broad adoption, the hardware works well and will only have incremental improvements and price reductions at this point.

Are any of those accessible to hobbyists? As in, can I order a pair of glasses and have a reasonably open SDK?

Have a look at Microsoft Research's Seeing AI. It is still under development but can describe scenes and objects within, plus a bunch of other stuff such as documents, people, light, colour, currency, products etc. The app is only on Apple (no Android!) but the home page does have videos of each feature.

https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/ai/seeing-ai

There are people with fear of unexpected strangers walking up behind them, frequently from PTSD. This can be crippling in outdoor walking situations. A bag/fanny-pack sized device which can tap the wearer to let them know it really is time to check behind them would find a market… of some size… at some price.

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