Borg-Style Head-Mounted Display

Written by Stewart

How to be completely hands-free

Here's some interesting news from a company who've designed a head-mounted computer. Anyone familiar with Star Trek's Borg will no doubt feel we've somehow taken a significant step towards turning science fiction into science reality. Restistance to this technology is surely futile!

The far out thinkers at Kopin have devised a headset that includes what is roundly hailed as the world's first all-in-one head-mounted computer and display unit, and man does it look cool. Kopin are specialists in developing what they describe as micro-display technologies; tiny displays that cram a lot of pixels into a small space so it can be viewed at relatively close distances to the eye. Their "Golden-i" product incorporates a 1.5cm display (or 0.6 inches for the metrically challenged), attached to an electronic headseunit that runs Windows CE.

What I find fascinating is the fact that although the display is the size of your thumb, it translates as a full 15" monitor when positioned close to the eye. The images below should give you a good idea of what I mean. The display, according to Kopin, will provide "hands-free spontaneous access to all digital information, broadcast programming and Internet services," Apparently the device is compatible with 480p too, not quite HD, but hey it's still impressive considering the size.

The possibilities are endless when you tie-in speech recognition software. Well, how did you expect to navigate around the OS? Mouse? I'm fairly certain that the idea at this stage is to simply talk to the headset, so it types what you're saying and presumably does what you tell it to do when you tell it. Admittedly I haven't quite worked this out yet, and it's possible Kopin hasn't either.

Even if this technology is still many years from reaching maturity, it warms my cockles to know that there are prototypes out there being developed that will one day make us truly hands-free. Word on the street is that 2010 will see mass production.

Source.

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