Lifeboat Foundation

His vision is definitely achievable.

The future of airport transfer—in a pod.

World-renowned global futurist Dr. James Canton envisions hotel experiences that include supersonic travel and DNA-driven spa treatments, so what can we expect in the next decade? Canton, a former Apple Computer executive, author and social scientist, worked in conjunction with Hotels.com, to present the Hotels of the Future Study at a recent conference in San Francisco. In the study he describes hotels with everything from RoboButlers and virtual reality entertainment to hotel restaurants based on gourmet genomics and the emergence of neurotechnology to make sleep more refreshing. Canton, who has advised three White House Administrations and over 100 companies, believes these megatrends will shape the future of the hotel experience and that the RoboButler is the change we will most likely see first. Although, he also notes that plans are already underway for a supersonic hyperloop route from Los Angeles to New York City.

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Quantum will be the most important technology in 2017; as it will touch everything as well as change everything. Until we see a better integration of AR in Enterprise Apps, platforms, and published services; AR like VR will remain a niche market gadget.

I do know companies like Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle have been looking at ways to leverage AR in their enterprise platforms and services such as ERP and CRM as well as Big Data Analytics; however, to see the volume of sales needed to make VR or AR have staying power on a large scale; the vendors will need to it a pragmatic useful device on multiple fronts. And, yes it is great that we’re using VR and AR in healthcare, defense, engineering, and entertainment (includes gaming); we just need to make it an every consumer device that people canot live with out.

2016 has been a remarkable year that’s brought continued growth and awareness to the worlds of Augmented, Virtual and Mixed Reality. Set to become a $165 Billion dollar industry by 2020, there’s still a common question that lingers among many newcomers trying to understand this fast moving digital phenomena we are just beginning to watch evolve: What’s the difference between them and how will it impact the digital world as I currently know it?

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The VR simulator that could turn you into a SUPERHERO: Hypersuit uses a movable ‘exoskeleton’ for virtual flight…

A virtual reality exoskeleton could soon allow you to ‘explore breathtaking universes’ without ever leaving your home.

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Valery Spiridonov will use a virtual reality system to prepare for the shock of looking down and seeing someone else’s body.

Tilt Brush example. — Pictures courtesy of HTC ViveLONDON, Dec 27 — From January 11 to 14, 2017, the Royal Academy of Art in London will present the first ever 3D-printed artworks in virtual reality, produced in collaboration with HTC Vive.

Artists from the Royal Academy and its alumni will create artwork using the virtual reality platform HTC Vive, creations that visitors to the exhibition will be able to experience in real time, “fully immersing themselves in the virtual piece.”

OPINION | Imagine if a member of Congress could don a headset and experience being a refugee.

HoloMaps augmented reality map explorer for Microsoft HoloLens displays 3D cities and locations around the world for AR and VR.

Some of the biggest names in the business are teaming up to secure the future of virtual reality.

Google, Sony, Oculus, Samsung, Acer and HTC have combined their efforts in order to create a healthy and equal industry for virtual reality hardware and software to develop and expand. The result is the Global Virtual Reality Association, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting the growth of the virtual reality industry by providing educational resources, connecting developers with necessary resources and much more.

“The organization will foster dialogue between public and private stakeholders in VR around the world and make education and training material available to the public. Working groups will be organized around important topics for the industry, enabling us to produce relevant research and guidance. We will also host and participate in international discussions on important topics in VR to shape the public discussion on the technology. Ultimately, the group will develop best practices and share them openly.”

Step inside the portal and everything is white, calm, silent: this is where researchers are helping craft the future of virtual reality. I speak out loud, and my voice echoes around the empty space. In place of the clutter on the outside, each panel is unadorned, save for a series of small black spots: cameras recording your every move. There are 480 VGA cameras and 30 HD cameras, as well as 10 RGB-D depth sensors borrowed from Xbox gaming consoles. The massive collection of recording apparatus is synced together, and its collective output is combined into a single, digital file. One minute of recording amounts to 600GB of data.

The hundreds of cameras record people talking, bartering, and playing games. Imagine the motion-capture systems used by Hollywood filmmakers, but on steroids. The footage it records captures a stunningly accurate three-dimensional representation of people’s bodies in motion, from the bend in an elbow to a wrinkle in your brow. The lab is trying to map the language of our bodies, the signals and social cues we send one another with our hands, posture, and gaze. It is building a database that aims to decipher the constant, unspoken communication we all use without thinking, what the early 20th century anthropologist Edward Sapir once called an “elaborate code that is written nowhere, known to no one, and understood by all.”

The original goal of the Panoptic Studio was to use this understanding of body language to improve the way robots relate to human beings, to make them more natural partners at work or in play. But the research being done here has recently found another purpose. What works for making robots more lifelike and social could also be applied to virtual characters. That’s why this basement lab caught the attention of one of the biggest players in virtual reality: Facebook. In April 2015, the Silicon Valley giant hired Yaser Sheikh, an associate professor at Carnegie Mellon and director of the Panoptic Studio, to assist in research to improve social interaction in VR.

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